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| Silver Foxes passing through one of the narrow shallow cuts in Florida Bay |
104 miles to cover today including a stop for fuel and water. The weather still looks good for a crossing to Bimini tomorrow hence the long distance today. We normally only travel 7-8 mph so to cover that distance at that speed would not work. So pick up the pace we must. At 7.5 mph I normally average a little better than 2 miles per gallon. Today we will travel at nearly 10 mph and I will average about 1 mile per gallon of fuel. In order to arrive at our fueling stop before 5pm we needed to pull anchor at the Shark river and be underway at 6 am well before first light. After dodging 2 sailboats without their anchor lights on and following our GPS track out the River we were underway on the Florida Bay. As the sun rose it was a most delightful day. A light chop on the Bay.
We are now headed to the Florida Keys traveling on the North and West side of the keys rounding the tip of Florida and headed in the direction of Miami. The route up the Keys this way is very shallow and you must follow the markers very closely. Judy and I had traveled this way before in 2008 and had never seen less than 5' of water. This time was different. Before entering Buttonwood sound our Depthfinder alarm would continually sound and in several places we saw 4.1' of water. The water draft of our boat is slightly under 4'. Lands End II draws a little over 4' so he touched bottom several times. The bottom is sand but it is still scary. We were traveling at nearly low tide. Not good timing. Tide here doesn't help much as it only about 8". In this case any tide would have helped This section of shallow water slowed us down to near idle but i had allowed for some slop in our travel time so we arrived at Gilberts Marina near Key Largo FL to take on fuel and water a little after 4pm. 13 miles to our anchorage at Pumpkin Key which is spitting distance from the entrance to Angelfish Creek. Angelfish Creek is a waterway that leads from the Florida Bay (West) side of the Keys to the Atlantic Ocean where we will depart in the morning for Bimini some 63 miles away. Arriving at our Pumpkin Key Anchorage, which is a beautiful small island, we set the hook at 6:30 pm. Gave each other the thumbs up for a successful day, talked on the radio for our plans for departure in the morning and then went about our way to prepare dinner. Little did we know our peaceful delightful anchorage would turn into a nightmare
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| One of the many dolphins that follow us-Great photo by John West |
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