Quicksilver Sail Tales: Boot Key-Marathon, Florida

Sombrero Beach City Park

Trying not to take this for granted. We have been doing a pretty good job of that. Each morning Jon and I sit in the cockpit of Quicksilver and look for the dolphin hunting their breakfast. Usually we spot the pelican first circling around. Sure enough, below the pelican are dolphin. Jon thinks they work together. The pelican is not shy either. He will jump right between the dolphin for his share. After breakfast we decide our chores for the day. (It depends on what broke the day before or something Jon's been thinking about). The first day a so after we got here we decided to find the beach and clean the bottom of our dingy. We followed the creek around from the harbor, it is probably a little more than a mile by dingy. This is where Jon saw a flying sting ray. There is plenty of birds, houses, anchored boats and cranes to see. (Side note: just had to stop writing this to watch four dolphin swimming by....a small dog on another boat started barking and wagging his tail and one of the dolphin did a flip in the air to say hello...so exciting). Ok, so we find the beach and take all our stuff out of the dingy and flip it and start scrubbing. It is a good little job and I found out quickly to protect my hands. I got my first barnacle bite on my finger..them barnacles be sharp matey. The beach is city run and quite nice. There are a lot of people swimming and snorkeling. And we swam for a long time. The water temperature is around 78 degrees..niiiicccce! Night time in the harbor is beautiful. The city has 250 mooring balls and two separate anchorages. So you have close to 300 anchor lights on after a spectacular sunset. It almost like the stars are a little closer. So , again, trying not to take this all for granted we sit in the cockpit and listen to music and watch the moon and stars for as long as we can. We have ventured out as well to the local night life. Last Friday we had fun and the dockside listening to the Eric Stone Band. I even danced a bit. Lots of fun people watching too. Wow, their are more than a few characters in this town. Speaking of which, they is an older gentleman at the dock that calls himself captain Jack. He greets everyone coming to the dingy dock. He presented we a beautiful flower yesterday. So sweet. I stuck it in my hair behind my ear and Jon and I went off to explore to the west of the Marina . When I took my sunglasses off at a fish store that sells awesome lobster reuben, I noticed a small ant on them. I flicked off and didn't think of it again. (You know where this is going). A while later I feel something crawling on my shoulder, yep another ant. I get smart now, with the help of Jon and get rid of the flower. Well I think I itched the rest of the day and pictured a colony of ants living in my curly hair.

Seeing the gulf side where we had our lobster Reuben.

It's Wednesday and we think it looks good to start traveling toward Key West on Friday. We're thinking of stoping at Bahia Honda State Park, about 10 miles away. Maybe do some snorkeling. Then travel the 30 miles to Key West where we plan to hook up with my big sister, Mary. Can't wait....to be continued

On the creek toward the beach.