Marathon Marina

This lovely picture was taken from the dock at the slip we were assigned when we moved from the mooring balls at Boot Key Harbor to Marathon Marina. The boat in profile is the Shingebiss. We absolutely loved our unobstructed view of the ocean and the sunset. Even though we were right next to the restaurant, it was quiet and breezy and what a view from the back deck of our boat.

We like everything about this marina. It's nicely landscaped, there's lots of cool boats to look at and the laundry and shower facilities are plentiful and close by. We're located at the west end of the island, right before the Seven Mile Bridge. It's a 2.5 mile bike ride to the Publix or you can bike out the 'old' bridge walking/biking path to Pidgeon Key. The folks in the marina are real friendly, many of them winter here on their boats. We went out to dinner last week with a group of them and learned that some of them have cruised their boats throughout the Caribbean.


After four nights in our slip, we woke to a barge and crane removing the old slips in front of the restaurant. The marina manager came to tell us we would have to move over onto a more "interior" slip because our dock was being removed and replaced. Oh darn! Here's the slip without us there and without the dock, but the view remains and they say we can move back when the work is done. We'll see if it happens within our month long stay.

We've been both very relaxed and very busy at the same time since we arrived here. In the morning we do some boat chores, in the afternoon we go for a bike ride or a dinghy ride. Marathon is a favorite winter stopover for current loopers and past loopers who are still cruising. The marinas and the mooring balls are all full and the cruising lifestyle is very much a part of the town culture. There are alot of good restaurants, a weekly farmers market, and a large West Marine store. We love Marathon and are sure our time here will be lots of fun and go by quickly.

We are now 4 months into the Great Loop. Out of 121 days gone by, we've traveled on 61 of them. We've gone 2386 miles for an average of 39 miles per cruising day. We went through 40 locks and have purchased 738 gallons of fuel. We stayed in marinas 74 nights, anchored 33 nights, scored 3 free dock nights, and stayed on a mooring ball 8 nights. What a ride !!

Boot Key Harbor

We left Everglades National Park Marina at Flamingo early in the morning in moderate fog. Since it was Saturday, fishing boats were being launched at a feverish pace, so we figured if they could go out, so could we. We had been in much worse fog on the rivers, plus Steve had set the chart plotter to leave a trail of our route coming in, so that we could retrace our 10 miles back to rejoin the route to Marathon. Here's the view as we left, the building on the left is the visitors center.

The fog got worse at times, then appeared to be lifting. It's hard to burn fog off with 97% humidity, but it was warm and the seas were as flat as we had seen them. We busied ourselves with spotting and avoiding the numerous crabpots in Florida Bay. On these long straight passages, Steve enjoys finding the next marker on his chart plotter, setting the course, and then finally spotting the marker "live". The fog was lifting. We were excited and proud to think that we had cruised the Shingebiss all the way to the Keys. Boot Key Harbor and the City of Marathon are at the east end of the famous Seven Mile Bridge. Impossible to get a picture of the entire bridge because, well, it's 7 miles long.

The story is that the mammoth task of building the first 7 mile bridge across open water was quite a "marathon" job, giving the town its name. We followed the markers to Moser Channel, came under the bridge...

... and entered the Atlantic Ocean. In this picture, you can see the original bridge in the lower right behind the tall bridge, still intact except for the middle cut out. It's used as a fishing pier.

We enter Boot Key Harbor. The marina on the right is Marathon Marina, where we will move tomorrow to start our 30 day stay.

The entrance to the Harbor is lined with marinas and restaurants. After passing under an old lift bridge, we entered the City Mooring Field. It's huge with 226 mooring balls and right now they are all occupied. Liveaboards are allowed, you actually cannot "store" your boat here, you have to be on it. For $21/day ($105/week or $275/month), you get a ball, use of the dinghy dock, showers, laundry etc. They also have a huge lounge, book exchange, TV's, bike racks, and a "project room". You even get one parking space with the monthly. The pumpout boat visits weekly. The majority of boats are sail boats and there are some unique ones, although the truly unique ones are the ones anchored just on the edge of the mooring field. The balls are close together and there's lots of windmills whirring, and dinghys scooting about. Here is the mooring field as we approached.

and here's Shingebiss tethered to Ball W1 ... it's kind of like your address.

We were famished and needed a walk so we walked to the Hurricane and had a cheeseburger and fries. This is one of two dinghy docks, where the "hard" and "soft" dinghy's each have their own designated areas. They give you a colored band to attach to your motor as your "permit" to use the dock.

Here's the other dinghy dock, Steve counted 61 dinghys at this dock at 10 am on Sunday.
When we arrived, we were given a welcome packet. A nice insulated bag containing all sorts of literature about the harbor and the island. "Cruisers Net" is the volunteer group that puts together the packets. Every morning at 9 am, on VHF channel 68, Cruisers Net broadcasts the daily news which includes:

• new boats to the harbor
• weather, of course
• a flea market where anyone can sell or give stuff they don't want, or request to get new stuff they do want
• announcements like yoga daily at 10 and a softball game today at 3
• entertainment, music, and charity events coming up
• anyone can ask questions and participate as they want to.

Today they announced a $6 breakfast at the American Legion, so we went and it was great.

It's all pretty darn amazing and fun. We ran into Ron and Barb (BarRon) from St. Paul and have been contacted by our buddies Marty and Jerry (Monarch) who are at the Marathon Yacht Club and invited us over there to watch the Vikings tonight.

It's been a fabulous journey so far and it feels like a bit of milestone to get to Marathon. We'll be moving to the marina tomorrow and are looking forward to settling in. I'll probably not blog quite so often for the next month, but will try for weekly updates at the least. Keep those comments coming in and stay warm up there. Go Vikes.

Everglades Nat'l Park Marina

We headed out to a beautiful cruising day to go from Russell Pass to our next anchorage at the Little Shark River. It was truly fun to cruise out on the Gulf without big waves, fog, cold, or darkness. Please see Gulf Crossing posting from early December if you do not understand this reference.

By early afternoon we entered the mouth of the Little Shark River. This was one of the most beautiful anchorages we had been in. Also one of the most quiet places we've ever experienced.

The water was completely calm, providing a great reflection of the mangrove forest that lines the river.

The tide was slowly flowing in and then gradually stopped and reversed, turning the boat around for this great sunset view. It was incredibly quiet, as a flock of seagulls flew up the river, we could hear their wings beating in the air. We had heard there were alligators here, but did not see any.

The next morning we continued down the coast to the very southern end of the Florida mainland and made a turn to port. We could see a beautiful beach to our left, which we later learned is 12 miles long and only accessible by water. Flamingo, in the Everglades National Park, has a visitors center and a marina. There are tour boats that run out of the marina, camping, and a wilderness water trail designed for small boats, canoes and kayaks. Ever since we left Fort Myers we had been seeing small dead fish in the water that died from cold shock during the recent cold snap. When we entered the small harbor at Flamingo, it was filled with larger dead fish and the odor was not pleasant. There was only one other boat in the harbor, so we had our choice of slips. We decided to place ourselves upwind from the water and the smell so pulled along side the sea wall on the south side. We've got a great breeze and no smell. Here's the view from our back deck with the Gulf in the background.

This part of the park is one of the few places in the world where crocodiles and alligators live together, and there are about 5 American Crocodiles that hang around the marina. I had to hop a boundary fence to get this shot but it was worth it. Yes, it's real, pretty cool, eh? Check out those teeth.

Here's a couple of them snuggling up together. The blend in so well to the wall that you'd probably walk right by and not even notice them. There are about 1500 of them in the park, just a few decades ago there were only 50.

Today we were ready for some exercise, so we unloaded the bikes, grabbed a park trail map and chose a 13 mile loop combination of roads and hike/bike trails. Yes, 13 miles is a good distance, but it's very flat, how hard could it be? We turned off the road onto Rowdy Bend, described as "an overgrown old road bed". Not too bad at first, just some bumps from small tree roots...but then the mud began. It was edge to edge, impossible to avoid. You can see it in this picture, but trust me, this is minor compared to what followed. Long sections of deep gray, clay like mud, the wheels were buried. We discussed turning around (twice), but decided to continue. I gripped my handlebars with white knuckles, and pushed my pedals with all I had. Got through most of it, but (twice) I just couldn't do it and had to put my feet down into ankle deep muck. Yuk !! By this time we figured we were half way, so pressed on.

Finally it got drier and intersected with the next trail, Snake Bight. This trail must have been a park created path, it was well elevated above the mangrove swamp, straight and dry !!

When we got back to the road, we still had 6 miles to go ... head on into about a 10 mph wind. Whew, it was quite an ordeal, we had to hose off the bikes, my shoes and ourselves when we got back. We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon and will be heading out for Marathon tomorrow am. The past couple of weeks have been great ... the 80 degree sunny days, the pristine beaches and totally isolated anchorages have made this stretch of the trip one of our favorites so far.

Ten Thousand Islands

We had a great time watching the Vikings beat up on the Cowboys with friends Gale and Maureen. Since they next have to take on the Saints, we planned a route to Marathon that would get us there by Sunday, with a couple of extra days built in, just in case. We topped off the fuel tanks at Ballard Oil in Fort Myers Beach Monday morning. At $2.71/gallon, much cheaper than the Keys and will get us into April. It was a beautiful day when we exited Matanzas for a short "outside" run, about 4 miles offshore, to Naples. The swells were pretty big, and it was a "hang onto the boat with one hand" cruise. Downtown Naples seen from the Gulf.

Gordon Pass brought us into the residential section of Naples. The homes here are larger and more luxurious than any we've seen. This is an average one in the neighborhood we transitted. The canals were wide, well marked and full of boating activity.

We turned into the "old ICW" which runs from Naples to just south of Marco Island. This narrow, undeveloped stretch was lined with mangroves and busy with boaters, but very scenic.

We found a cozy little anchorage off the waterway between Little Marco Island and Keewaden Island. Keewaden is a narrow barrier island where there are docks on the inside and Gulf Beach on the outside. The docks appear to have been put in by a developer and have "land for sale" signs, but only one had a home built on it. The next morning we took the dinghy down to the south end of Keewaden and walked across to one of the most gorgeous beaches we have seen. There were piles of shells and we found a couple to add to our collection along with 3 good sized perfect sand dollars.

The beach was deserted, but I would imagine it's quite busy on weekends being located between Naples and Marco Island. Can you see the condo's of Marco Island in the background of this picture?

Back on the old ICW, we began to see lots of Osprey nests on the channel markers. We could hear the babies chirping in some of them.

Can you see the second bird down in the nest in this one?

We wiggled our way through Marco Island with some shallow water and tricky markings and exited the old ICW for the last time at Coon Pass.

After Marco Island, we saw no more development and were in the Ten Thousand Islands, all covered with mangroves with small beaches on some of the shores. A dolphin with a baby swam with us for a short while.

Our second anchorage on the five day plan to Marathon is at Russell Pass. It's deserted, very dark and quiet at night. Here's this morning's view from the boat out into the Gulf, where we will head out soon for the next leg of the journey.

Mooring Ball Life

Life on the Fort Myers Beach mooring balls is remarkably busy and very entertaining. This picture, taken from the Pier, shows lots of people on the beach, but not nearly as busy as the last time we were here during spring break several years ago. We enjoyed walking on this lovely beach and have been up and down in both directions. The open lot in the middle is a controversial piece of property, once valued at over $30 million, but now heading for auction and might fetch $6 million at the most. It's at the center of the tourist action, and many feel the town should try to acquire it.

When we take the dinghy in each day, we pass many cruising boats, some trawlers, but the majority are sailboats. Most of the people on the mooring balls are long term cruisers, some staying here for the winter and others just stopping off for a break before their next adventure. The dinghy dock is located very near the bridge you take to get to Fort Myers Beach by car. We were advised to lock up the dinghy here since a couple of dinghys that were left unlocked overnight were stolen. This is also where we fill up the water jugs each day to keep our water tank full.

The boat pictured below, Freddy Freddy, is one of the most interesting vessels we've seen. Freddy Freddy's owners built her (and her equally unique dinghy) themselves and have been cruising for 5 years, including a Great Loop completion.

I've been trying all week to get a good picture of the mooring field. Here is the East Mooring Field, the one we are in, late in the afternoon, looking at the bow of Shingebiss on the left side of the picture.

Here is a sunset taken from our boat, looking toward the West Mooring Field, closer to the dinghy dock. Although we have a longer ride to the dock, it's very quiet out here at night, so we've decided we like it.

Last night, one of the boating couples organized a shrimp and oyster feed for us all. We ate spicy Vietnamese salad and shucked raw oysters. I ate one raw oyster, just for the experience, but don't plan on eating any more. Steve tried his hand at shucking. The man in the peach shirt was the one who organized the party.

Meanwhile the huge head on shrimp were marinating in garlic and olive oil and the coals were heating on two grills. We skewered the shrimp and this gal joyfully tended the grills for a couple of hours.

Someone cooked up a special sauce that enhanced the shrimp even more and everyone ate until they were stuffed. It was great fun to meet all the cruisers, hear their stories, and experience the comraderie. Yesterdays temperature was in the high 70's and Steve was happily driving the dinghy back to the boat after dark in a teeshirt and shorts.

We think we are finally in the warm weather for good, but we've learned to expect any kind of weather to happen at any given time or location. On Sunday, we are having Gale and Maureen (boat Blue Heron) over to watch the Vikings/Cowboys game on our new TV. Reception with rabbit ears is quite astonishing. Plans are to leave here in a few days for the cruise to Marathon. Steve has 9 stops picked out for us along that route. We've decided that he is in charge of planning for the future, I'm in charge of documenting the past, and we're both trying to live in the present !!!

Fort Myers Beach

Steve made chili for our last night at the Legacy Harbour Marina and we had Kay & Bob and Libby & Clark for dinner on our boat, proving you can have dinner for 6 on a 34' Mainship. We had such a great time with them at Legacy, but the weather was warming up so it was time to head out. Libby and Kay came out to "conch us out" of the harbor. It had been too cold for our entire stay for them to conch the sun down, which is their usual tradition. Here they are on the dock holding their conch shells.

and here they are conching us out as we actually leave our slip at Legacy.
I took a very short (8 second) video of their warm up session if you want to hear the actual sounds they produce, it'll be at the end of this post.

We had a very pleasant sunny cruise to the Fort Myers Beach Mooring Field where we plan to stay about a week. We passed under the Sanibel Island Causeway where the highrises of Fort Myers Beach can be seen in the background under the bridge.

A little closer to the beach, we turned toward the beach and followed the markers into Matanzas Pass, a busy harbor between Estero and San Carlos Islands.

The harbor is filled with marinas, a USCG station, shrimp boats, dockside condo's and restaurants and a city run mooring field right in the middle of it all. For $13/day, you can tie to one of the 70 mooring balls, get a pumpout whenever you need one from the mobile pump out boat and dinghy into the Matanzas Inn dinghy dock to use the showers, laundry, get water, or leave your dinghy for the day to explore the fun town and beach.

The mooring balls allow many more boats to use an anchorage than if they all had their own anchor down. They are very popular in areas that have coral reefs too because anchoring at random destroys the coral, but the mooring balls are permanently screwed into the bottom of the sea allowing the reefs to continue to grow. Steve nudged the boat up to the ball and I reached down from the bow with the boat hook to grab the "pennant", a 5-10' line attached to the ball to which you tie your own line, and then cleat your line off. Alas, there was no pennant on this one, nor any of the ones I could see. So I pulled the huge ball up and out of the water with the boat hook and Steve leaned over and threaded our line through the eye on top of the ball. Whew, those things are heavy.....

Today we took the dinghy in to Moss Marine to visit looper friends Tom and Diann (boat Noah Genda). We enjoyed getting caught up on their cruising adventures since the last time we had seen them and looking at charts for the best route to the Keys. Steve and I walked to the center of town and hopped on the Beach Trolley for a round trip tour through Fort Myers Beach, Lovers Key, and Bonita Shores. It was a good way to get a quick look at the resorts, houses, beaches and bays in this popular area. During our dinghy ride back to the boat, Steve took us in for a close up look at the shrimp boat fleet.

Fort Myers Beach is a funky happenin' touristy kinda place with a little something for everyone so we expect to spend the next couple of days doing a little more exploring and beach walking.

Legacy Harbour Marina, Fort Myers

Cayo Costa State Park was the last anchorage on our "8 days without a marina", a new Shingebiss record. A short dinghy ride to the State Park dock and a 3/4 mile hike leads to the Gulf beach.

There is a tram (trailer with seats pulled by pickup truck) that you can ride, but we opted for the walk. We had run aground for the first time earlier in the day, toward the edge of, but still in, the channel. We were going at cruising speed, so could not motor off. A nice man with his son in a 20' fishing boat pulled us off. We are appreciating our well protected prop and shallow 3' draft more and more as we hear about (and experience) the "skinny water" of Florida. Pelican Bay, the huge anchorage at Cayo Costa, had some shallow water as well, and we touched bottom once as we felt our way into the anchorage. Cayo Costa is a beautiful park with hiking trails, campgrounds and beach. It's just north of well known islands Captiva and Sanibel, but is only accessible by water. A ferry brings folks out from Fort Meyers to hunt shells, hike and camp.

Except for the one day of rain, we had enjoyed good weather during this entire cruising stretch, but that changed the following morning and we had a chilly, windy run into Fort Myers. Right off the intercoastal, we saw this private party island. Tiny, yet had all they needed.

The intercoastal waterway ends at Fort Myers where we turned up the Caloosahatchee River, which is part of the Okeechobee Waterway. Some loopers take this shortcut to the east (Atlantic) coast of Florida, but most seem to take the longer route through the Keys. We went 17 miles up the Caloosahatchee to Legacy Harbour Marina (http://www.legacyharbourmarina.com/) to meet fellow Minnesota/Mississippi River boaters Kay and Bob who cruise Loriel down here every other year in the fall and then back up in the spring. They are not loopers, but call themselves yoyos. They've chosen a great winter home at Legacy Marina, with huge floating concrete docks, 2 blocks from downtown, 2 blocks from Publix and all the other amenities that we've learned to appreciate so much. Here's the marina as we approached.

Although it's right on the main river channel, it's a "minimum wake" zone and has a large floating breakwater. Lots of beautiful, well maintained boats are here occupied by yoyos, loopers, snowbirds, and every other sort of adventurous cruiser. Some boaters here have one boat here and another up in the Great Lakes for the summer !!

Bob and Kay had not yet returned from their Christmas in Minnesota, so we were welcomed by their cruising pals Clark and Libby, who yoyo Kindred Spirit from Lake Michigan. We are docked right by them both, right behind the floating breakwater. We've got a long walk to the laundry and showers, but a great view of the river and the sunsets. We've been on a whirlwind schedule since we arrived, including nightly social hours, shopping (we bought a TV !!!), and dinner with Ray and Delila (Sundancer, the converted shrimp boat) who we had met at Port St. Joe.

We spent a morning at the Winter Estates of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, who were best friends and neighbors. It's a great tour of the restored homes and remarkable gardens and trees. Mr. Edison spent his later years trying to find a better plant from which to extract rubber and had a laboratory on the grounds as well. This banyan tree was only 4 feet high when planted and is now the largest in the continental US covering almost an acre of ground. It's all the same tree !!!

Yesterday, Kay and Bob took us to Manatee Park, where the warm waters from the nearby power plant attract the manatees. There were at least a hundred of them clustered here and even more people clustered on the railings along the shore oohing and awing whenever one would raise their nose to breath.

They are very camera shy, so you'll have to take our word for it that it was very cool to see them and that every little bump in the photo below is indeed an actual manatee.

Last night we strolled downtown to have dinner at the French Connection. Bob and Kay at the wall, then Clark and Libby, then Steve and me. They've been fabulous "harbor hosts" and we've really enjoyed sharing tales of the rivers and the high seas.

As always seems to be the case, the cold weather has caught up with us again, so our plans are to head south in a couple of days. Our next big destination is Marathon; it's about midway down the Keys and has the best natural harbor in the Keys, filled with winter cruisers and reputed to be lots of fun. After much deliberation (and budget planning), we found a marina there with a slip available and reserved it for a month starting January 27. Here's the website of where we will be if you want to take a look. http://www.keysmarinamarathon.com/ We have a few weeks of travel time to get there, so Steve is busy planning the routes and the stops along the way. Kay has just brought us the keys to their car and we're off to Walmart for provisioning.