Key West to Marathon

March 27, 2002

March 27, 2002 - Key West to Marathon

We left Key West for Marathon at 8:10 after checking out of the Marina on a sunny, HOT, steamy day with an off shore breeze. Gee, our dinner last night with the group was so delicious, and we send our thanks to all of them for gathering the troops once again. The water was so clean and is every shade of blue possible - just beautiful. We traveled along the Hawks Channel, which is between the Keys and a barrier reef that protects it from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Our day was uneventful until we arrived in Marathon at 12:15 and tried to find the Sombrero Marina. We thought we were in the right spot, but Bill went past the markers 20 and 21 and went straight up a small creek instead of turning directly to port after the marks. One might say " we were up a creek without a paddle". It was getting quite shallow so we called the marina to get straightened out with our instructions. We had to carefully get turned around and we finally arrived at the marina an hour later, with the VILLAGE awaiting us. It really was very low tide and we turned up a lot of sand trying to get into the slip which was a tad crunky and narrow. We were finally settled when a big sailboat came by and immediately got stuck on the bottom just in front of us. Better them than us, I guess. Because of the beautiful full moon we now have a very high tide, and we can hardly climb up onto the boat even with the ladder. We'll have to watch the tide closely tomorrow when we travel to Islamorada where we will visit my cousin Leslie and Jack.