We left the mooring field early on Tuesday morning, happy to be back on the move. Key West is an awesome place to visit, but rough on the body and the pocketbook if we stayed any longer!
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| A beautiful sunrise to greet the day |
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| Leaving the mooring field |
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| Quiet calm |
We rounded Key West and said goodbye for now. The winds were out of the ENE, of course the general direction we were heading. However with the little bit of North to it, we were able to raise sails and motor sail. The Atlantic was fairly calm, seas 1-2 feet. We headed out beyond the Hawk Channel and continued east off shore. We were on a hunt for a mahi mahi, which are found in deep water. On our way, as we always try to do, we were trolling and began catching fish! The first two were caught simultaneously on the two lines we had out, two yellow tail snappers! Yum! After that, Ed had a hard time keeping up with catching, cleaning, filleting and getting the lines back out again (wah,wah, such problems!).
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| Snapper! |
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King Mackerel
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| Lunch! |
We continued catching Spanish Mackerels. Some say they are "fishy" fish, but when caught, filleted, washed clean of all blood, immediately frozen, they are delicious! We still have a freezer full. We caught a couple of unidentified Jacks. We only kept the first one, until we were sure of what type of Jack it was. It was a tough one to clean and fillet. Thanks to our Facebook friends, we received ideas and Dave identified it as a Yellow Jack, and it was good eating. (we later tried it and he was right! Yummy!)
We reached Molasses Key right as the sun was setting and at its brightest on the water. We inched our way back to the nice spot we had found on the way down. We got through the very narrow channel and then got a little greedy. We wanted to go just a little bit further in, closer to the island. Just as Ed had decided we could go no further due to shallow water, we saw the depth sounder hit 5.2, 4.9 and oops! We ran aground as we were turning around. Luckily, only Manatee's bow was stuck, and the stern was still floating. Ed got into the dinghy with the auxiliary anchor and kedged us right off! Whew. We proceeded back to the "safe spot", dropped anchor and stayed put for the night. It is such a nice spot, as long as you stay afloat!
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| Diving off the Kayaks |
The following morning we went snorkeling off the shallows. We took the kayaks, which Ed leashed to an ankle and dragged behind us. The water was crystal clear and inviting. I actually shelled under water! Found lots of pretty pieces of coral, and lots of clam shells.
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| Crystal clear water! Molasses Key |
We stayed an extra day, and just relaxed. We planned on going over to Boot Harbor Mooring field and wait out the next big blow for a few days, but on Friday morning Ed woke up to a gut feeling telling him its time to go and make our way up to Key Largo. We had a weather window of a couple of days before the 20-25 kt winds get here. So we pulled it together pretty quickly and weighed anchor at 7:45 am. We motored to the fuel dock at the Marathon Marina and RV Resort, which was super easy and we were once again on our way. The wind was out of the NE, and once again, we were going that very direction so we weren't able to sail. We motored up to Tavanier Key and dropped anchor for the evening there.
The following morning, we motored up the Hawk Channel, trolled, but were only able to hook Blue Runner Jacks and had to release. No yummy eating fish today, oh well. We approached Angelfish Creek around lunch time. After making our way through Card Sound, then Barnes Sound, we went under the Overseas Highway Bridge and located the mooring ball. However, another boat (the owner or the Sand Dollar Boat Rentals) anchored his boat so close to the mooring ball, we were not able to safely tie up to it. Sucks, because we were really planning on the security of the mooring ball for Thanksgiving weekend. Georgeanne had tried to reach the boat owner, to no avail. Poor boating etiquette...to anchor right on top of an existing mooring ball! We went past the mooring ball and the small anchorage and found a spot to drop the anchor, as the winds were picking up to the 25-30 kt range out of the Northeast. The anchor seemed to be holding, but the bottom was soft and mushy with a layer of grass on top. Not great for holding. We stayed put there for a couple of days, but had to pull the anchor and go to the fuel dock to refill the water holding tanks.
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| The GPS showing Manatee dragging all over the place! |
The rest of the week was busy with running errands (we rented a car), hanging out with Georgeanne and Rob, and re-anchoring. The winds have been howling all week, so needless to say we were interrupted a few times by Manatee dragging anchor. We woke up Sunday morning at 4:30 am to being a little too far from where we dropped the hook. We had to hop up and weigh anchor, and find deeper water. We motored for a couple of hours until daylight, then found a nice protected basin to drop anchor, have breakfast and get a plan. We decided to go into Gilbert's and get a slip at the face dock for the day and night. My brother Tim and his friend Mike were coming later that day to visit for a couple of days.
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| Tim and Mike |
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| Capt Ed, Me, Tim |
We had a great couple of days visiting, and Monday morning we went back out to our original spot and this time we dropped 3 anchors at different points to allow for strong winds from every direction. It took a full 24 hours to feel comfortable that Manatee would not drag anchor again.
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| GPS showing not much movement |
Wednesday rolled around, forecast is for WIND, WIND AND MORE WIND all weekend, with gusts to 40-45 kts! Georgeanne and her friends will watch over Manatee and we are hopping a flight out of Miami to Little Rock to spend Thanksgiving with Edward and Casey, Casey's family, and Erin and Anna.
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| Just finished with a rain storm, dinghying to shore, to go to the airport |
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| There she is, and hopefully to stay until our return! |
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Upon our return to Manatee after the holiday, we will be provisioning and watching for the weather window to make the jump over to Bimini.
