A quick trip to Trader Joe’s in anticipation of leaving tomorrow morning. Oh, how I love that store.  Sunday (2/23) we released our lines and eased out of Sunset Harbour Marina and Yacht Club about 8:15 leaving the mega yachts behind. We wanted to make the 9:00 opening of the Venetian (11 foot) Bridge. We left too early so ended up doing donuts for about 20 minutes. Darn.

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny day with a bit of breeze and without a lot of boat traffic until just before reaching Key Largo, FL. Then the Cigarettes came out. Lots of long shiny Cigarette boats in different vibrant colors – red, blue, yellow, black, etc., came zooming by us from every direction. They were soooo fast and sooo loud and really put on a quite a show for us without much waking.

We arrived at Anchorage Resort in Key Largo, FL about 1:50. Yay, we are in the Keys!!! The “resort” is pretty rustic with condos that appear to have been built in the 1960’s and is now a timeshare resort with a small marina with only three boats. The property had lots of deferred maintenance and there wasn’t much within walking distance except a restaurant next door. But, across the ICW we could see and hear Gilbert’s Resort which was rocking out. The music was LOUD and not very good, and we were told the food was not very good either. There must be some attraction (cheap drinks, maybe) because the place was jam packed both on land and on the water and was where all the sexy, loud and fast Cigarettes were headed.

In the afternoon, we took Scout-About across to check out Gilbert’s and cruised beside a little mangrove cove.  Both Snooki and The Duke were excited and interested in all that was going on when suddenly The Duke went for a tumble over the side. We discovered that he CAN swim – his four little short legs were moving like lightning! The problem was he was swimming toward the mangroves and not the boat. But we quickly scooped him up – that’s why they have those handles on doggie life vests. He was a bit surprised and chilly but, otherwise, no worse for wear. Back to the boat for a shampoo and warm up.

 Monday (2/24) morning about 10:00 we headed for Coral Bay Marina in Islamorada, FL. Again, we had a lovely warm and sunny day as we cruised through a little part of the Everglades National Forest. Then we had mostly open water, but we did experience some “skinny” water moments. We now know our draft really is 3’ 8” because we saw 3’8” on the depth sounder then 0 when we hit bottom. We were going very slowly, and the bottom was sand so no problem.

As we were docking at Coral Bay Marina, we heard voices yelling “Sharon, Mike”, “Mike, Sharon”. We looked over to see Melissa and Jeff (Flip Flop) in their dinghy. They were anchored just outside the marina, saw us coming in and came over to say hi. We have seen Jeff and Melissa several times along the way. In the evening we met them at Lorelei’s Restaurant and Cabana Bar to watch the sunset, have drinks and catch up. It is sooooo much fun seeing new-old friends again and swapping stories about where everyone has been since we last saw each other.  Both boats are headed to Marathon (at different times) and they gave us a great referral for dockage so I’m sure we will catch up with them again in Marathon, FL.

We stayed at Coral Bay Marina in Islamorada, FL on Monday and Tuesday because we were having electronic issues. The chart plotter kept crashing – not good! Then the depth sounder was showing 27 feet as we were at the dock in about five feet of water – really not good! So, Michael made lots of calls to tech support without much help but he continued to investigate and finally got the chart plotter working again. There was a tiny “card” (about the size of my thumb nail) in the plotter on the fly bridge which is called the slave plotter to the master plotter in the main salon. Hmmm, that’s another story. The tiny card has been there all along without any problems but apparently, with the last Navionics update, that tiny card didn’t like it and fought back causing all kinds of problems. Once taken out – it appeared the problem was solved.

Next problem – depth sounder – maybe there was something on the transducer in the water under the boat causing it to read incorrectly (?). We did watch a Manatee saunter under the boat on Tuesday morning, maybe it did something to cause a problem (?). Somebody (Michael) needed to dive under the boat to take a look. Low and behold a big-ol chunk of seaweed was lodged in the speed transducer which is right next to the sounder transducer. Once removed, all was working again. Wala, all seems good now. So, Michael spent all day Tuesday “fixing” things while I cleaned and did laundry. Not particularly a fun day in paradise but nice that all seems to be working again and are clean.

Wednesday (2/26) we left Coral Bay Marina headed for Marathon, FL. It was an easy-peasy ride and in just a little over four hours we arrived at Marathon Yacht Club in the rain. We got Scout secured with help of a couple of slip neighbors. Once we were secure, bow in, one of the helpers mentioned “you may want to consider turning your boat around.” The front coming in is from the north and will blow right down our channel.  He said “It will be bumpy and it might be best to be bow into the wind”. We took the advice of the member with local knowledge and he helped us turn around to face the forecasted wind. He was quite right. About 11:30 pm it started howling and blowing at 20+ knots and we felt like we were riding a bucking bronco.

Marathon Yacht Club was a great but we decided to leave Thursday (2/27) morning for calmer waters since the forecast was for the bumpiness to continue for a couple of days. We took off for Bonefish Marina just a few short miles away and found a lovely marina with privately owned slips and nice, calm waters. We might stay here for a while.

Will keep you posted…..