The Keys!!!

We had a beautiful day to head for Marathon. Sails out, winds out of the northeast, and finally the beautiful blue-green water (after months of brownish-green). Lots of crab pots were waiting for us, but we managed to avoid them all. The tide was exceptionally low in the Boot Key Harbor mooring field due to the full moon the previous night, so even though it was an area we'd traveled through several times we found a shoal that couldn't accommodate our 6' draft. We were visited by lots of nice dinghies and friendly sailors offering assistance, but ultimately had to wait for higher tides to continue. But we did make it into the marina, hooked up to electricity and water and TV (after a month on the hook), and had a good dinner and happy hour at Dockside. We opted to stay at Dockside Marina for a month, since all the mooring balls are full with a waiting list of 40. Apparently it's a zoo at the city marina (which is in charge of the mooring field), with cold water showers and an actual fist fight over washers/dryers (who likes to do laundry enough to fight over it??). With all the fronts moving through, there's no guarantee anyone will move soon, so we gratefully took the two remaining slips at Dockside.

We're close enough to town to provision on our bikes, which is a good thing since all the soap on the boat has been used to wash out the captain's mouth!