After Boca Chica we headed to Marathon Key. We decided to travel “on the outside” of the Keys rather than ducking inside. Although the water on the inside looked to be a little calmer, it also looked very skinny (i.e. shallow) – and having run aground a couple of times already and hit something under the surface (see our adventures on Day 1), I am not interested in skinny water. Since the weather was so perfect, it didn’t make much difference, it was a very easy day. Ann kept her eyes open for lighthouses and dolphins and I was watching out for the ubiquitous crab pots.
We wanted to go to Marathon because it has a vast mooring field. I am guessing that there are over 300 mooring balls. Some are occupied by full time live-aboards, some by relatively long term residents and some by transients (like us) who stay only a few days or a week or two. They also have about 50 balls specifically reserved for boats our size. What was important for us was that we could “pretend” we were anchoring and test all those systems that we would need if we were anchoring. Remember that this was one of the purposes of the shakedown cruise. If we had not broken the windlass, we would have stayed on the hook almost every night. Anyway, we checked out our inverter, our generator, our magma grill and, of course, our dingy. Everything worked surprisingly well. We even found the dingy was easier to take off the boat than we thought it was going to be, but putting it back on the boat was a bear (more on that later). We did discover, however, that we have the wrong dingy.
For cruisers, the dingy is the equivalent of the family car. It is the vessel you use to do everything from going grocery shopping to picking up friends who come to visit. Now, our dingy is a really cool 11’4” center console Super Sport Boston Whaler with a 30 HP outboard; on the dingy circuit it can be basically described as a classic overpowered sports car. Moreover, like many other things on our boat, cosmetically, it has been very well cared for. It has a well-varnished console and seats, as well as a highly-polished chrome steering wheel. Everywhere we go, people comment on the coolness of our dingy. The problem is that we need an SUV, not a sports car. Our dingy, for example, can only carry three people; our visitors usually come in pairs, making it necessary to make two trips to and from the shore; we can only carry a limited amount of groceries; we can’t use much more than ten of the thirty horsepower.
Marathon is in many respects, a cruiser’s heaven. They have a huge building dedicated to cruisers with a dingy dock, several television rooms, broadband internet access, a book trading library, a workshop, and modern restroom and showers. It also has a “cruiser’s net” on the VHF radio every morning where people discuss the events taking place in the area, ask who needs help that day – help on anything from a ride to West Marine or the grocery store to technical assistance on boat repair and ask and receive answers about the local area.
Now if Marathon had things to do and see, we might still be there. The problem was that you walk about a mile up Hwy 1 you can get to Home Depot. If you walk about a mile the other way, you get to West Marine. In between we didn’t see any particularly interesting restaurants, decent movie theaters, or touristy-things that would make us want to stay more than a couple of days. So, while we really liked the opportunity to go to Home Depot on the first day, and to West Marine on the second day, we were kind of at a loss on the third day. (Actually, we are short changing Marathon. If we would have been willing to get our bikes down and visit some of the other boaters who moored nearby, we would doubtless have enjoyed it more – especially since the cost for the mooring ball was only $22 per day. But we decided to move on.)
The question at this point was where to go. If, however, you are a Bogey fan the an swer to that question is evident. No, we are not planning a side trip to Casablanca, to the Sierra Madre or to Africa. We are planning a trip, of course, to Key Largo, the name of one of Florida’s keys as well as of a classic film noir by John Huston that stars Humphrey Bogart as World War II vet Frank McCloud. (Visiting Key Largo to pay his respects to the family of his late war buddy, McCloud attempts to comfort his comrade's widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall), and father, James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), who operate a hotel. But McCloud realizes that mobsters, led by the infamous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), are staying in the hotel. When the criminals take over the establishment, conflict is inevitable.) Anyway, we had to go to Key Largo.
No comments:
Post a Comment