also known as “Rounding the Horn of Florida”.  Okay, so no one but me says that but they should, right?

Since the last time we visited, we were in Smokehouse Bay on Little Marco Island where we successfully patched up are little leak (from the OCEAN to the inside of our boat!!!), sailed into the Everglades, around the tip of Florida, across Florida Bay and up a couple of Keys – yeah!

We are currently sitting in John Pennekamp State Park, which is a fantastic park in Key Largo.  If you’re in the area, you should definitely stop in.

On the way here, we had several adventures, which I’ll detail for you, below.  Here goes:

Little Marco Island

Little Marco Island is funny to us because D’s oldest, bestest friend is Marco so we had a big day of all the funny things we could see his name on.  Here’s a real winner:

We stayed in Little Smokehouse Bay, which is a great little anchorage along the “Esplanade” as in “don’t tie up your dinghy on the “Esss-plaaa-naude”.   We did.  And then when we came back from running our errands, it was gone!  Stolen?  At the “Esss-plaaa-naude”???  Serves me right for asking (and then answering):  “Shouldn’t we lock the dink up?  Nah, it’s too fancy here”.  Well, still my beating heart, it had just been moved by the dockmaster who was really a great guy just “doing his job” at the “Esss-plaaa-naude”.  Lesson learned.

On the way into and out of Smokehouse Bay, you wind along million-dollar homes (Alan Jackson lives here, sometimes) on a little channel that can be *quite shallow* at times, so stay within the markers!  Which, btw, are topped with Osprey nests.  See:

I think this is super cool and like to imagine if there’s some sort of debate between boaters and enviros re maintaining the signs – or the nests.  Hmmm . . .

We had a nice day leaving Marco and heading down to Ten Thousands Islands, which as you might imagine, is hundreds thousands, of mangrove islands.  We were making great time and could have pressed on, but decided to stop at Indian Key early in the afternoon and dinghy into Everglades City.  And, we were glad we did.

Indian Key was super neat: on the eastern tip of the island is a spit of beach that was covered in white pelicans.  I hadn’t seen them before and I haven’t seen them since.  Only on Indian Key.  I couldn’t get close enough to take a proper picture without bothering the wildlife (no moleste!) so you’ll have to trust me on this.

 

The Channel up to Everglades City is awesome, beautiful and wild.  And, the channel inside the City is lined with cute little bungalows which made me want to move here (all it takes is a cute bungalow on the water, really, that’s all).  Oh, and fantastic seafood!  Bungalows, check, water, check, seafood, check.

But, alas, we left.  Apparently, if D, Mr. K and I did move there we might push the population over 1,000 so perhaps it’s good that we moved on – I wouldn’t want them to have to change the sign.

The next day, we ran down to Snake River and anchored in the mouth right before dark – Pfew!  We were lucky to be greeted again by a welcoming dolphin (I’m beginning to see a trend – or a stalker!).  But, as soon as the sun went done, the real wild-life came out:  bugs!  As you might imagine, being in the middle of the ‘glades – a swamp – there are a lot of bugs and even though it’s technically winter here, so there are less bugs, there are still a lot of bugs.  I’d hate to be here in summer – yuck!

Oh and also, funny thing:  I read about little popcorn noises on the side of the hull being the noise of barnacles attaching and guess what we heard in the mouth of Snake River:  yup, barnacles.  Even though I’m definitely an animal lover, I think there may be such a thing as too much wildlife.

While we had planned on staying and exploring Snake River – I here it’s kind of neat – we opted to get going the next day.   We were eager to get to the clear water of Keys and thought we might just make it to civilization in time for the Superbowl (ads).

Rounding “The Horn of Florida”, we got our first big waves and the Gulf and Florida Bay smashed into each other.  It was a great reminder of what we have taken on and, while it wasn’t dangerous, it sure was uncomfortable.   Since the morning, I had been diligently checking the water, waiting for it to turn from the green-brown of the Gulf to a much lighter aqua of of the Bay and sure enough, turn it did!  While we comfortably had 12-20 feet under us in the Gulf, we now had to keep a close eye on our depths, while dodging crab pots which were conveniently on our rhumb line.

As we approached the Arsenic Bank (a dotted line of sandbars), we cautiously read the water and approached the marker on our starboard – even though it sure looked shallow!  Well, it was.  And, we ran aground.  But, it was sea grass, D took a dip, pushed us off and we carefully navigated our way out to of the Bay and to the Atlantic through the Channel 5 bridge.   Hooray!

We spent that night in Long Key State Park and while it was definitely protected on three sides, we got wind on the one that wasn’t protected – of course!  For those who’ve never experienced something like this, it can be likes sleeping on a trampoline – fun, right?  Not.   Plus, while it was a nice, uncrowded anchorage, there were really no nearby services or docking opportunities so we opted to head up to Key Largo for the next couple of days.

Being too cheap to pull into John Pennekamp (where we are now), we opted to spend two nights in Rock Harbor – which I would not recommend.  We had heard the anchorage was poor holding (“rock” would have been a big clue) but there were at least a dozen boats there (some on mooring balls) so how bad could it be, right?  We plopped our anchor down, checked in and it seems to stick immediately.  Plus, we had a CQR out on 70 feet of chain and the wind was only supposed to be 10-20 – no biggie, right?  Wrong.

Night #1 was fine.  And, the next day we dinghied out to the “Dive Inn” and heard more about the bottom being crappy:  the “moorings” were actually attached to “transmissions”, “tractors” and all sorts of flotsam and jetsom.  Awesome.  Wonder what we were caught on? (answer coming soon . . .)

Night #2 there was a storm.  Although brief, it caused a neighboring boat to drag anchor on this rock shelf bottom. It definitely caught our attention when the radio chatter mentioned “yeah, we’ve got ‘about’ 25 feet of rode out and we’re dragging right by that cat”. So, needless to say, we leaped up and started to keep watch.  Luckily, there was no damage to anyone’s boat, D and I got to practice our re-setting drills and the storm passed in about an hour.  But, as anyone white-knuckling an hour can tell you, it’s a long time to be wondering “are we dragging? are they?  I can’t tell, are we getting closer to each other?”.

The next morning, when preparing to leave, we checked out landmarks and were pretty sure we didn’t drag, but we couldn’t swear we didn’t, either.   The GPS coords were off – a little – could this just be from the swing?  Aww, well, we were just trying to up and adios but we couldn’t pull anchor.   Rock Harbor!  With me on the helm and D on the anchor, we tried a few things and realized we were dragging while not unsticking – weird.  About that time, we realized we needed to do something ASAP – we were 15 yards and closing on another boat.  So, D dove down and discovered we were stuck on 2 cinder blocks tied with some line. As soon as we were free (and our chain was up, not laying down) we bounced across the rock within 50 feet of the other boat before high-tailing it out of the harbor to John Pennekamp State Park.  Lesson(s) learned.

Needless to say, I’ve never been more happy to pay $21.50 to the gov and be on a ball, in a protected bay, with showers, laundry, water and pump out – oh, and they have a snack bar with pizza and coke (with ice), too!

Finally, while the amenities were definitely appreciated, the coolest part about being in Pennekamp is that my friend Susan happened to be in town.  While we planned to meet up over the last couple of days, I wasn’t sure when she was coming.  Imagine my surprise when walking through the parking lot I heard my name being shouted from a familiar voice – how weird was that!?!   I hadn’t run into anyone I knew (except family visiting) in about 6 weeks!

Susan was a god-send and offered to drive us (in a car!) to the gas station, grocery store and local West Marine.  It was a very welcome offer which we happily took her up on.   And, now, we are fully provisioned, which feels nice (and expensive!).

One super-cool thing that happened while Susan was here is that a couple of manatees decided to hang out all day close to the shore.  While I had seen them up in Crystal River, the even more natural setting, and clearer water, here made the experience really amazing.  Although I later found out it’s illegal, it was also such a trip to watch them bee-line it over to an opened faucet and lap up the fresh water like frat boys to a beer bong.  Their tongues and gums are so weird looking!

 

While it’s been a couple of days of alternating overcast, rain or humidity, we have really enjoyed our time in Key Largo.  Kinda makes us not want to leave.  But, we are excited for the possibility of a weather window next week where we’ll head to the Bahamas!  Until then, my friends . . .