Passage to Key West

There are lots of bikes down here. We're not sure about this funnel bike--your guess is as good as ours!

These two pictures are of The mooring field in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon. It's a great place with lots of sailors. Folks tell us that it is where lots of boaters stay for the winter. My Mom reminded me that her brother--my Uncle Don--and his wife Rose used to live near here. Small world.

Here's the Caribbean Soul getting fresh water and diesel fuel for the passage to Key West--we're hoping to use mostly sail power not diesel--but we filled up the tank just in case. When we sail out in the ocean we hoist the inflatable dinghy up on the bow as you see here.

And the good news is that we did get to use sail power. The wind was mild and right behind us, so John dug around in the sail locker under our v-berth and found the spinnaker and all the lines it takes to fly it. EEEEEHaw, what fun that was!

Because we were going so nice and slow, we decided to anchor behind Loggerhead Key which is about halfway to Key West from Marathon. It was nice to be anchored by ourselves and watch the sunset.

We're pretty happy sailors.

On day two of our trip to Key West, the spinnakering was even better--or maybe we're getting better with this light sail. In fact, we got so good, we did some pretty terrific controlled jibes with the spinnaker!

bb

Once it was set, that spinnaker just stayed full. In fact, we put the spinnaker up as we headed out first thing in the morning and five hours later with the spinnaker still full, we arrived in Key West. Yay!

This was one of the first sights we saw sailing into Key West--a day charter boat full of kayaks. Ya just know this is going to be a fun place!

We picked up a mooring at Key West City Marina on the North side of the key near Garrison Bight. This is sunrise at our mooring.

And this is sunrise through the galley port light.

I thought this cormorant drying his wings on a mooring ball in the early morning light was an interesting sight. Later that guy and some of his friend hung out on our boat while we were on shore. They made a terrible mess--no holding tanks for those guys-- no manners either!