On to Marathon

We were up early. Beth walked the dogs as I got the boat ready to go.  The weather was actually as predicted with 20 knots of wind out of the east and clear skies.  As usual, the direction we needed to go is exactly into the wind.  We departed Key West around 7:30am and headed into the Atlantic Ocean.

We said goodbye to our new friends at the Coast Guard and hoped we wouldn't be seeing them again on this trip.

The tourist ship was docked at Mallory Square.

The seas were a bit choppy but the forecast was for them to calm down by the afternoon.
We stayed in Hawks Channel and did our best to dodge the 987 crab pots along the way.  While I am sure that count isn't accurate, probably seriously underestimated, crab pots are everywhere.  We missed the majority of them but caught a line on one which Beth expertly and quickly removed, caught one with the rudder and brushed another one.  None of them caused any issues but I can not emphasize how many of these things are around. 
Finally, we were approaching the famous 7 mile bridge which we needed to pass under.

Back in the land of bridges

Considering the previous trip, this was calm.  The crew and boat did very well and we made pretty good time

Approaching Marathon Key

We arrived at Blackfin Marina at 5pm and Barry was at the slip waiting to help us tie up.  The dogs were the first off the boat to sniff around and check out the new surroundings.  I gave the boat a good rinse and cleaned all the windows as the salt spray had accumulated enough that it was getting hard to see through them.  We got everything connected and Beth started packing for our trip to Tampa while I took the dogs on an extended walk around the property, check in at the office and get a general lay of the land.  On my walk I met Victoria and chatted for abit.  She and her husband had cruised the Caribbean for 13 years.  Beth came out to find me and met Valerie. Her an her husband are staying on property vacationing.  Everyone we encountered was so nice and friendly.  I think we appreciated being able to hold a reasonable conversation in English.  We ate at the local restaurant, Hurricanes which was on property and very good although the tempting menu item of a Carolina BBQ was exactly what I wanted, it didn't live up to expectations.  Once we returned to the boat I was able to get our satellite dish working again so now we have good old USA TV.  As usual, with 250+ channels, there wasn't anything on so we went to bed.