Wednesday, November 28th, found us up and moving with the sunrise. We were planning to reach Marathon, Florida, which is located about 50 miles east of Key West. It was a run of almost 100 nautical miles (120 statute or 'regular' miles for you landlubbers, or 9-10 hours) and we wanted to make sure we arrived before sunset. Early starts have the additional benefit of beautiful sunrises.
South of Key Biscayne, there are numerous fishing shacks. They sit out on the reefs, miles from nowhere. Marty is thinking one of these might be the answer if the day ever comes when we decide to give up the cruising life.
Good News - Bad News: The good news was that we were in the beautiful blue-green waters of the Keys. The bad news was that there were crab and lobster traps EVERYWHERE. We dodged them for most of the day and had to have seen thousands of them. The following seas made it especially challenging, but we managed to miss all of them.
As we entered the western end of Boot Key Harbor at Marathon on Vaca Key, we were greeted by another bridge. Luckily, all we had to do was lower the antennas and we were able to get under without having to have the bridge raised.
Originally, when we came into the harbor, we were just taking a look to see if there was any place to anchor. All of the places to anchor were filled with boats (many of them looked like they have been here for years!). Other areas were dotted with mooring balls. We contacted the Harbormaster and decided to pick up one of the over 220 mooring balls that have been installed by the city of Marathon. There were quite a few moorings open, but when talked to the staff at the Dockmaster's Office the next day, they stated that they are expecting the harbor to be full in a few weeks.
In the Dockmaster's Office area, they had this display of what the mooring are like. They auger a long steel pole into the harbor floor and then attach some significant tackle to that.
One of the key locations in the harbor is the dinghy dock. Even with all of the open mooring sites, there were lots of dinghys at the dock.
The "smorgasboat" or water taxi circulates through the harbor which delivers daily papers, danish and other essentials. Also, for a daily fee you can have it pick you up and deliver you to any location on the harbor. There is also a pump-out boat which will come to your boat at its mooring and pump out your holding tank - this is included in the modest fee for tying up to the mooring ball.
We launched the dinghy from Monarch and took a tour of the area for over three hours. Marty is thinking these double-wide homes look interesting for our next life phase. It seemed like each of them had a dock for a fishing boat and a fish cleaning station. The fishing must be good as we saw quite a few people cleaning their catches as we toured by.
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