Tuesday January’s 16th, twenty eighteen
I’m not sure how long it’s been since I checked in. We left Sunrise Bay on the ICW in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday the 13th. All of the cruise ships were at their berths and luckily they stayed there. I didn’t want to get into a game of bumper boats with them. It was interesting that Marc Couse from Spider Bay and other locales somehow found us on web or security cams and posted pics of us passing by. I hope he wasn’t on the shore waving because we didn’t notice him.
We got out on the open sea on Saturday morning and the wind was friendly and off-shore. We set up for a beam reach and off we went. The sun was shining the sea was relatively flat. Our destination was Rodriguez Key near Key Largo. Almost always a beautiful day will go away the closer you get to your destination and today was no different. The wind picked up to over 20 and gusting higher. It was colder and darker. One boat was anchored in the limited lee behind Rodriguez. There was lots of room but we were open to the longest fetch. I put out 125 feet of chain in 8 feet of water and she stayed put. The wind did shift North giving us much better protection from the sea.
Sunday with with the weather over the next few days to switch to East component winds we had to move. We could not see a window to cross to Bahamas in the next week so we decided to go to Marathon and wait like everyone else. The trip along the keys was ok, the land was providing cover and the wind stayed abaft of beam. We left Rodriquez at 07:30 and arrived in Marathon and were hanging on a mooring ball by 14:00. The mangoes came out and greeted us. I thought the leis and ukulele were a little much, but you know John.
There are many other boats here ‘waiting’ in Marathon or Boot Key Harbor. Some are short timers like us, we will be gone the first window. Waiters range to those who can barely remember when they arrived… Marathon is like that. The ravages of the storm are everywhere. The leaves on trees are just starting to come back.
The pictures below are mostly about the process the USCG is overseeing to collect derelict and abandoned storm boats. They are dragged in, lifted, crushed and hauled away.
more later…
