Days 44, 45, 46 and 47 Boot Key Harbor

 We pulled up anchor and left Ligumvitae Key on Friday and went outside to the ocean and Hawks Channel through Channel 5 inlet. We had a wonderful motor sail in the ocean with relatively calm conditions down to Vaca Key which is actually the key on which Marathon is located. Florance got to do a little impromptu snorkeling to disentangle a stone crab trap that got tangled around our port sail drive.

We pulled into Boot Key Harbor where we have picked up a mooring ball. We were amazed how many boats there are here in Boot Key Harbor, 211 mooring balls and a lot of full-time live-a-board residents using them.  Almost everyone we've dealt with here from taxi cab drivers to dive masters live on their boats here in Boot Key Harbor. It's very reasonable, only $26 a day or around $400 a month which includes inexpensive water and a dinghy dock. We were able to do our Publix/wagon thingy and provisioned the boat.

Florance checked into diving and we were very fortunate on Sunday afternoon to go out with Captain Hook:s dive charters for two beautiful dives on the reefs off Marathon. We had absolutely ideal conditions with seas a foot or less and great visibility. We dove Wrist and Coffins reefs.

We were able to take a taxi to and from the dive shop. They're very reasonable here only $8 for less than 4 miles. We were actually planning to head out again on Monday to go back out into Hawk's Channel which is the ocean side of the keys but it's been a very blustery day today and we decided to spend another day here at Boot Key Harbor. We found the Fisheries Market restaurant on the Bay for a delicious hogfish and snapper dinner. 🍴We hope to head off to the Bayside tomorrow, as it will still be fairly windy with 3-4 foot seas in the ocean. We plan to start working our way back towards Key Largo and Islamorada. We are really looking forward to at least one more dive trip if not two before we start gradually working our way back home. I'm going to my granddaughter's graduation from Vassar May 21st.  Florance is going to be getting ready to head off to the South of France for her niece's wedding. We're trying to work out a chance for me to meet her after the wedding for a week or two and do some touring together in the  South of France. It's it's amazing how fast our time has passed down here. It seems to we just got here and yet we've been here for almost 2 months already. The weather has been absolutely perfect with very nice temperatures in the mid to upper 80s during the day and then in the seventies at night with nice breezes, which has made sleeping rather comfortable. I've been down here in the summer and certainly would not want to try and do it again in an open boat with no air conditioning. We've been mostly very lucky on the weather as well with only a few blustery or rainy days that have kept us from doing outside the boat activities. There of course is never a shortage of in the boat activities as she requires constant maintenance. We've gotten really good at taking our 35 gallons worth of 5 gallon jugs to the dingy dock, filling them with water, winching them back on the boat with our dinghy davits, and keeping our water tanks topped off.💪 We continue to be very happy that we have a washing machine. Watching the laundry go around in a laundromat is not one of my favorite pastimes. It's so convenient to do the small amount of laundry we have and hang it on our lifelines. I'm trying to wear my favorite boat outfit every day which is a bathing suit and bare feet so my laundry requirements are minimal.