Key Largo to Marathon

Long day, but still a good one. We all pulled out of our slips and headed for "crash corner" right around 8:00 (right after our last breakfast on the veranda). Leaving at high tide made the transit out past the breakwater easy (depths never dipped below 7.4 feet) and we headed south into a gentle sea and breeze. As the keys curved westward, so did we and we were able to carry our mainsail trimmed close for the 55 mile trip to Marathon. There was very little traffic and very little to see as we cruised down Hawk Channel. The water, a beautiful turquoise color was always between 15 and 24 feet deep and all we saw were a few Portuguese Man 0 War jellyfish and one large sea turtle.

We made the entrance to the harbor at Marathon by 5:00 and were assigned mooring in rows S, T and U. There are LOTS of moorings here. like 221 or something! Dan and I gathered moorings fees from the other three and headed into the Marathon City Marina to settle up and scope out the situation. Luckily I took the camera, because between sunset and moonrise, I didn't know which way to turn. As we returned from the Marina we dropped of shower/head keys for everyone, and we accepted a dinner invite from Andiamo on our way by. (They felt they owed us a dinner because Betty had been sick and opted out of sharing dinner back at the Hutchinson Island Marriott and we couldn't pass up such a good offer!) We headed back to Brunelle to pick up a few things to add to the dinner and Dan dropped off a few tools to help Sevilla with a transmission fluid problem on our way to dinner.

Tomorrow is the last leg in our trip south (in Florida) and we hope to connect with Jay and Pegg for the last two days of Key West Race Week. There are 136 hot racing boats vying for honors, and we'll enjoy watching the action. After that, our next scheduled event is welcoming Sam, Jess, Ben and Oliver aboard somewhere in the Bahamas on February 27th. That gives us plenty of time (we hope!) to wander back up the Florida Keys and find a good weather window for the trip across the Gulf Stream. ~~~_/)~~~M&D

This isn't "one of us", but I couldn't resist the backlit image of a sailboat under full sail.

As I said in the blog, I didn't know which way to turn.

The moon was quite evident as we headed into the Marina to settle up, but it was even more dramatic as we headed back out to the boat. The ride over to Andiamo added more reflection on the water, including the Chinese like characters of the first vertical. The vertical on the right is Andiamo, with dinner waiting!