January 24-25 Marathon Fl

The fog was still with us as we awoke in our Little Shark River anchorage. We waited until 9:30-- it began to lift slightly. It will be a 6 hour trip to Marathon and the wind is supposed to pick up on Friday and besides we were experienced fog travelers as we already had a foggy day of travel on our way to Naples. We made our way out of the River at low tide and had plenty of water all the way to the Gulf which was only about a mile. We followed our trail left on the chartplotter to find our way out. Visibility was probably 200 yards and improved as we headed towards Marathon. Geographically Marathon is 55 miles directly south of The Little Shark River and about half way down in the chain of keys heading towards Key West. If you look at the map, the Keys actually run on a East West line. Our destination is Boot Key Harbor in Marathon. The city has recently installed 226 mooring balls for boats to tie up to. Sun Cat called ahead and they said there were lots of mooring balls available. Great trip-no waves in the Gulf and the fog lifted as we got closer to Marathon. As it turned out nearly 50 boats arrived in Marathon by the end of the day and they were very close to capacity. After tying up to the mooring ball, which was an adventure in itself, we lowered the dinghy and I went to the dockmasters office to register using my new 6hp Nissan. Worked great. Later that evening we went to Sun Cats boat where Gypsy Time joined us. We all celebrated Sun Cat's loop closure (completing the great circle loop) during cocktails. On Friday the wind picked up, but Judy and I went to shore via dinghy and had lunch at the Fishery restaurant where we had a lobster Reuben sandwich. Finding a "parking space" at the dinghy dock was a challenge. When we left, Judy counted 61 inlatable dinghys at the dock. It was like playing bumper cars when we left the dock-we could barely squeeze amongst the dinghys to get out of the dock. I dropped Judy off at the boat and then traveled on to a cut off of the Harbor to a West marine dock, where I purchased a longer boat hook to make picking up the mooring ball a lot easier. The wind really blew and made for a noisy night but that doesn't seem to bother us as we slept well . The picture is Boot Key Harbor at Marathon showing some of the boats tied to the mooring balls