Arriving to the Keys – Pre-Irma Marathon

Ok.. time warp time again, this time taking you back to mid-August and our arrival to the Keys, and our time there before Hurricane Irma! I promise you, we’re working to get the travelogue caught up to real time!  Thanks for hanging out with us!

When we last ended our Great Loop travel journal entry, we had just finished exploring Ten Thousand Islands and Everglades National Park on our way to the Keys.

This post covers the time span of August 18 up until our evacuation on September 5.

Arriving to Marathon, FL

As always, the video version (this time just under 9 minutes):

Stop 1: Molasses Key

There are multiple ways boats get from the Everglades to the Keys.

The Yacht Channel takes you more northward around the tip of south Florida and into Islamorada – and is ideal for boats like ours with a shallow draft due to lots of shoaling. For deeper boats, a direct passage between Cape Sable and Vaca Key (where Marathon is located) comes right under the 7-Mile Bridge. And others elect to go even more open water and head straight for Key West.

We opted for the middle route – mainly because we had a blog reader who manages a marina who had invited us to drop by for a visit. Marathon seemed like a nice central location re-provision, get the lay of the land and explore the Keys from.

So, our destination was set with about a 30 mile passage ahead of us.

We wanted our first taste of the Keys to be at anchor and do a bit of snorkeling off our own boat. Ideally, we would have spent a few days at anchor – but we were already getting itchy for easy walking, re-provisioniong and there was unsettled weather coming in.

There were also multiple tropical invests closing in that we were keeping a close eye on.

The closest anchorage was just a slight diversion to the south after we crossed to the ocean side of the 7-mile bridge – so we settled in for the night at Molasses Key. We got a little snorkeling in, but our anchor was not holding firmly on the ocean floor.

With each tidal current shift, we’d drag a few dozen feet.  After the experience we had at Cape Sable the night before as we took ricocheting waves to the beam – we were both tired and craving sleep, but were on hyper alert all night as a small storm cell moved through. Aside from some anchor dragging, we did fine.

By day break, we were more than ready to move on to the protected Boot Key Harbor tied up to a marina, and get a few good night’s sleep.

Stop 2: Burdines Marina

I remember the e-mail well, a sincerely written invitation for a few days of dockage at Burdines Waterfront Marina in Marathon from a long time blog follower – Randy. We always love meeting up with folks in our travels, and after a couple weeks basically on our own – we were ready to be around people.

Randy had the first slip in his marina ready for us – an extra wide 22′ slip with a clear view of open water. We pulled straight in with our aft windows surrounded by glorious views.

We got to know the staff at Burdines over sharing the eclipse together, and really enjoyed getting to know Randy.

He made us an off-season offer to use Burdines as our base camp up until November as he had wide open availability.

Since we had just made connections with SALT Marine down the road – a marine solar specialist available to approach our solar & lithium upgrade – we set intentions to do just that. We also enjoyed getting to know SALT’s founder Bob and his wife Lucia socially.

We started to settle into a pattern of enjoying delicious food off our bow at the infamous Burdines Waterfront Chiki Tiki Bar & Grille, exploring other local fare and dipping our toes into the tourist attractions & community.

We explored Boot Key Harbor, Whiskey Creek and Sombrero Beach by dinghy.

And we walked down the road to pay a visit to the Turtle Hospital, an amazing non-profit rescuing and healing injured sea turtles.

We made a list of other things we wanted to do – Pigeon Key, Dolphin Research Center and perhaps some boating excursions for more snorkeling and a trip down to the Keys (and Dry Tortugas).

But then.. we woke up at 5am on September 4 to the updated tropical weather forecast that changed everything for us. Irma had other plans.

At this point, we pre-empted the travelogue and switched to real time reporting for our evacuation.

We’ll get a re-cap of that out next, along with the specific boat preps we made before leaving Y-Not behind in Marathon for a catastrophic hurricane.

Great Loop Log (9/5/2017)

• Distance: 231.2 nm
• Stops: 16
• Marina Nights: 115
• Anchored Nights: 15
• Bridges : 11 
• Locks: 0

Other Travel Posts in this Great Loop Travel Series:

• South to the Keys:
  • The Great Loop: South to the Keys (Part 1) — Ft. Myers to Naples
  • The Great Loop: South to the Keys (Part 2) — Naples to Marco Island
  • The Great Loop: South to the Keys (Part 3) — Cruising Ten Thousand Islands
  • The Great Loop: South to the Keys (Part 4) — Everglades National Park — Little Shark River & Cape Sable
• Sometimes Nomads Need to Grow Some Barnacles (Two Months in Fort Myers)
• Starting the Great Loop — First Adventure: Punta Gorda, FL to Fort Myers, FL

View all our Great Loop Posts
on our new Interactive Map!

Current Status:

We updated last week about our little incident with a submerged channel marker just as we were exiting the Keys (literally.. it was the first channel marker into Biscayne Bay! Oh, the irony!).

We are now hauled out at SeaLab Marina in Miami, and repairs to our running gear are underway. We’ll likely also tackle as many projects as we can that were on our list for up the coast in Ft. Pierce that are best done out of the water.

While we’re sitting up here on blocks, living aboard with the constant sound of airplanes taking off, I’ll do my best to get the travelogue caught up.  Whew.. only two months left to catch up on.