Goodbye Keys

We left Book Key harbor on sunday morning. A week on the mooring ball, with only one day out in the boat. Somehow we thought we would spend more time cruising.  But it was still very  good.  We had lots of activities and most of them we enjoyed with Ann and John on Jascat.  But time to move on, every stitch of clothes washed,  groceries bought, water and fuel tanks full, poop tank emptied.  We headed west and took a look at some of the islands further down the Keys.  There are lots of islands and unless there is a road connecting them to the mainland there are no houses. It gets very shallow here and finding a deep enough passage becomes very difficult.  Once past there we headed north to Little shark river where we anchored for the night.  Monday we continued north to Goodland where we are now in a marina.  These two days have been difficult for us, it is open water exposed to the gulf and although it is not super rough we get rocked and rolled a lot.  Plus there is very little to see, some birds and occasional a Dolphin.

As you may have seen in some of the photos I made a Secchi Disk to measure water clarity. There is a lot of variability;
Panama City 3-5'
Ft Myers 4'
Everglade city 3'
Everglades in salt 3'
Everglades in fresh water 5'
Marathon in bay side 3-5'
boot key harbor 2'
West and north of Marathon 7'
Frances is now using this to describe my communications.  For example " your clarity index is 1" when I am particularly obtuse.

We have eaten at two restaurants that have a kitchen, ordering place and then picnic tables overlooking the water, both have been very good.  At Marathon, Key fisheries is walking distance to the Marina and we had a lunch and dinner there with Ann and John.  A frequent guest at Keys Fisheries

 Seeing the bottom in 7' of water west and north of Marathon.

The captain scored big time with the crew of Grebe when we stopped at a deserted beach where the only footprints were racoons and birds.  It is covered in shells. Very exposed so we could only stay for a little while with Grebe anchored off and we rowed the dingy to shore.