Headed North (East)

Key West is not technically the end of the keys. The Dry Tortugas are the end, but we won't be going there, at least not this time around. As you can see, this is mile 0 and the start of Highway 1 which actually ends somewhere up in Maine. We played in Key West for a few days. The sunset celebration is quite the event. Lots of entertainers like the juggeler we watched. The guy said he's been doing this for 7 years and that is his only form of employment. I'm sure he does pretty good, because there were lots of people there. All cash. No one gives him a W2. The butterfly is from the Butterfly Museum which is really interesting and is also in Key West. A fun place to spend some time with lots and lots of butterflies.

After 4 days of Spring Breakers and touring the town, we left and headed North (East). Winds were from the right direction so we went to Bahia Honda State Park to anchor. Ended up spending 2 nights there because the winds were again blowing 20 to 25 from the wrong direction. The photo of the bridge is of the old train, then hightway, bridge. As you can see they actually took out a section of the bridge so that boats like ours can enter the bay and gain access to the state park. It's a beautiful area, but the anchorage leaves something to be desired. There is a horrible current that goes between the bridges, everytime the tide changes, so between that and the high winds we had a pretty bumpy night. We actually had to move to another spot in the bay because we were having trouble getting the anchor to set.

We made it back to Marathon today from Bahia Honda. We'll be spending another 3 nights here in the hopes of getting a few repairs made. We need to have our anchor light at the top of the mast replaced and I don't do that kind of stuff anymore. We also noticed that we have a small rip in our main sail at the gromet for one of the reefing points. It's not a major problem, but I don't want it to get any worse. I can find people to do these things, but it's a question of whether they can do them before we have to leave again. Right now I could only get three days in the marina, so we may have to move somewhere else. But, I'm on their list in case someone cancels a reservation. I still need to replace the thermostate on the engine, but am still trying to locate the part. We plan to keep slowly heading back toward the Key Largo area.