Tuesday: Remember when I told you that Mr. Southern Comfort had been sick after being to Key West? He had been in Sickbay for three days, and when we had boat tails on Antonia with him, it was his first day out. Well – I either caught the Key West Krud from him, or I caught my own version. Stuffed up and throbbing head. All Day. I spent the entire day moving from the bed to the couch to the bed to the couch. At least it was raining outside so we weren’t missing anything on our Key West adventure! So – no pictures today. As they say on Princess Bride, I was mostly dead most of the day.
Month: March 2019
18Mar19: West to Key West!
Monday: We left our nice little resort around 9:00 and started our journey to Key West. The weather was nice – not too hot, and the breeze was following us, so it was a very comfortable day! It was a pretty uneventful day, which is what we like when we’re out on the water! One fun thing is that we spied Miss Utah headed toward us from Key West.
17Mar19: Scuba Sombrero
Sunday: We went all day without realizing that it was St Patty’s Day. Our plan for today was to go diving. We’ve been waiting for the weather, wind and waves to calm down enough so that it would be fun. We have been to Sombrero Reef before, and it is an easy schmeazy place to go diving. It is part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, so there are lots of fish, and there are 14 mooring buoys to tie up to. We wanted to get out there before all the buoys were full, so we headed out at 8:00. It would take us about an hour to get there. We were a little nervous as we approached, because there were a lot of boats there, and more approaching. We quick scoped it out and saw a couple of buoys open. They aren’t placed very far apart, but it looked like we would fit ok, so we grabbed SO13 and got all tied up. The buoys have a long yellow rope lead with a loop on them so you slip your own line through the loop and tie off. This shows where it is in relation to Marathon. Read more
15&16Mar19: Local flavor
Friday: The wind was still blowing pretty good for most of the day today. We did a little more cleaning, then not much of anything. Sit by the pool, get in the pool, read a book, drink a drink, put on more sunscreen. Rough life. We tried the Overseas Pub & Grill for dinner, since it was just a short walk out to the main drag. They had live music which I thought would be fun. We could hear the music before we even left our resort, and soon found that they were playing outside in the back, where there was a bar and picnic tables. We decided to go inside for dinner since it was so loud.
14Mar19 Easy Breezy in Marathon
Thursday: Sleep in days are so great! No agenda today. I got up and went to the clubhouse and enjoyed some fruit infused water before my coffee. Fancy Schmansy. Yum.
13Mar19 Blow, blow, blow the man down!
Wednesday: Neither of us slept very well last night. For some reason the drain pump for the shower kept cycling on about every 20 minutes. That was annoying and puzzling…. why does it think it needs to drain water? IS it draining water? If so, where is the water coming from!? 😳
We finally got up and found it to be very windy outside! We knew this weather was coming, and that is why we hustled on down to the Keys on the day that we did. It is supposed to blow for 2-3 days. It is still 80 some degrees, with a 15-20mph wind from the east. Read more
12Mar19 Stone Crab for dinner
Tuesday: We woke up to a beautiful sunny day. What a blessing to be in this beautiful place! I was sitting on the back deck of the boat in the morning shade, having my coffee. Captain was still lounging in bed. All of the sudden I heard a fish flop in the water near the boat, then BAMM! Something hit the swim step! I looked over the edge, and there was a barracuda, about 3 feet long, swimming away with a fish about 10” long hanging out of it’s mouth! I bet Mr. Barry was hanging out under the boat in the shade, just waiting for an unsuspecting breakfast to swim by. It sure startled me!😳 It was a beautiful day, calm breeze, and a nice warm pool. Ahhhh! Here are some pics of this pretty place:
11Mar19: 100 miles of Big Open Water
Monday: We got up before the sunshine, so that we would be ready to cast off lines as soon as it was light enough. We could have left the marina in the dark and found our way out to the Gulf without any problem, but we didn’t want to get out THERE in the dark, because there are crab pot buoys that could really ruin our day if we got one of them wrapped around a prop. We needed to wait until it would be light enough to see those time bombs. As we made our way back out the channel, we saw the Snook Inn, where we enjoyed sitting last night up on the top deck.
10Mar19: Out to the big water
Sunday: We did not set an alarm for wake up today. After losing an hour sleep with the switch to Daylight Savings Time, we figured we would wake up around sunrise time – which was nearly 8:00. I woke up around 7:45 and checked the weather, and it said FOG. What?! I looked outside and didn’t see any. We weren’t too worried about starting way early today since we didn’t need to time tides or anything. We had about 60 miles to go, which would take us about 7 hours, and we would be hopping out into the Gulf once we got south of Sanibel Island. Our destination today was Marco Island. So – we got up, fixed some coffee, and I strolled around just a little. I got us checked out with the Harbormaster, and we cast off lines. Now was the challenge that Captain wasn’t looking forward to….. backing all the way out of this fairway. The fella on the boat behind us came over to wish us a safe voyage. Kenny was standing up top watching the wind and water and plotting our escape plan. The nice man told him “You’ve got this – I watched you come in. You know how to handle this boat.” Wow – how nice! Kenny said people need to quit telling him such nice things, or his head might pop. But the man was right – Kenny pulled her away from the wall and backed her all the way down the fairway past the line of four boats on each side of us…. like he was driving a bowling ball right down the gutter…. as straight as could be. Perfect! Then we headed out to the bay and back to the ICW. And guess what? It WAS foggy out there! The wind was blowing from shore to the sea, so we had no fog at the seashore, but the bay did. Hmmmm – weird. It wasn’t bad – we’ve been in way worse. We could see pretty well, and the radar worked, so we were in good shape. Read more
09Mar19: Time for another adventure!
Saturday: While we were touring The Great Loop last year, we put off all kinds of doctor and dentist appointments. We are slowly getting caught up on those. We have a six week break between appointments, so we decided to load up Island Girl and get away from our “dirt” for awhile. We don’t have enough time to go to the Bahamas this winter like we planned, so we th0ught we should take a trip to the Florida Keys. It only takes three days to get there from home base. So we watched the weather, found some good travel days, and away we went – with our GOLD looper flag flying proudly!
