Miami to Marathon

The day before we left Miami, I saw my first manatee up close at the marina. It was so cool to see it pop its head above the water to look at me while it was drinking water from the hose a man was using to wash a boat. Then it swam towards me, but I was rushing to leave so I couldn't stay to pet the manatee. :( We left Miami on Dec. 3rd, 2009 to motor-sail down to Marathon in the Florida Keys. It was a rough passage down even though we listened to the weather and we planned the best we could with the forecasts. The first night we anchored in Key Largo at Thursday Cove, which was a coincidence because it was actually Thursday. :) We were the only boat in the cove and it was nice with all the peace and quiet. We enjoyed no boat traffic rocking our boat and the serenity of gently lapping water against the hull with the scenery of a beautiful sunset behind mangrove trees. The only thing is the mosquitoes that were trying to get in when the sun was setting, which we were very lucky to have our mesh netting to keep them out. There was absolutely no wind at night so there was nothing holding the mosquitoes back from our boat. We traveled 50 miles in about 10 hours to get to Key Largo from Miami. The wind and current was against us the entire time. :( We couldn't use our sail at all and we ended up using 9 gallons of diesel! The next day we had rainy and cloudy weather, but the wind was good enough for us to put out our sails so that really helped with our fuel consumption with only 3 gallons. We traveled from Key Largo to Long Key Bight. We learned the hard way that the charts were wrong in the cove and we ended up grounding our boat for the first time. It was fine because we have fin keels, which kept us upright. We were stuck for only 2 hours because we grounded in the low tide and it was rising so we were able to move the boat to deeper waters before sunset and put down our anchor. We crossed under the Channel #5 Bridge to get to Long Key Bight and we were at the mouth of the cove, which led to Hawks Channel so we were getting a lot of rocking due to the winds shifting against the current at night. In the morning, we had to wait until 7:30am before we could leave just to make sure we could get out without grounding the boat again. We tried to use Hawks Channel to get to Marathon, but we were beating against the wind and the current and we found the waves were tossing us around too much for comfort. So after 40 minutes we turned around and went back to the bay to take the long way over to Marathon. It was supposed to be a short trip with 23 miles from Long Key to Boot Key, but it took us all day! We had the winds and currents against us again, but this time we ran into a couple heavy rain storms so that slowed us down. We also were slowed with all the crab traps that littered the waters in the ICW. We would always have one in our path so we couldn't use the auto pilot for very long. There were so many crab traps all over the waters that we felt we were in a mine field. The crab traps are bad because they have these floating balls with strong ropes attached, which could get caught in our propeller. We were lucky to not have any incidents with the number of traps out there. We were able to use the sails some of the time down to Marathon, which helped us move faster and save fuel. Unfortunately, when we got close to Marathon we found our engine was overheating and spitting out fuel from the exhaust. We had to slow our engine down and rely on our sail to move, but we had problems with the wind shifting so we had to sail very close to the wind. We were able to move to the City of Marathon Marina and get to a mooring ball with the help of our friend, GR, pushing us close enough to the ball to tie a line because just as we were about to get close to a ball we were pushed back with a strong gust of wind. The engine was barely working to propel us forward so we just had it in idle. We were very relieved to get tied up to the mooring ball and relaxed immediately. We were able to enjoy the sunsets and sunrises much better on a mooring ball than when we are anchored out. :) It is really beautiful. I always love to watch the colors of the sky change as the sun appears and disappears from the horizon. Then we got settled in and ended up meeting a group of people near the tiki hut and ordered some pizza for dinner. It was fun to listen to them sing and play their guitars. I like the community feeling here and the marina has good facilities (hot water) for showers in a concrete- cinder block room and a large room with tv's, a library area, tables to sit and use the free wi-fi and recharge your laptops. They even have free weekly pump-outs where they come to your boat. Many places are within biking or even walking distance such as West Marine, Home Depot, Publix, K-mart, a public library, a big public park with basketball & tennis courts and a baseball & soccer field and a few restaurants nearby. But one thing they charge for is water at 5 cents a gallon so that is different from every other place we have been. The laundry business is also not as convenient because they require a card you have to put money on to be able to wash ($2) and dry ($1), which can only be done when the office is open. But other than that, we think this marina is really good and cater to cruisers. :) I also found out about a free group yoga class they have at the park so I am excited to take up yoga again.