Florida: Everglades City to Marathon in the Keys

Days 203 - 204
NM: 42 + 43 = 85
NM Total: 3777 (4346 miles)

Before leaving Everglades City Rod & Gun Club, I went into town to buy some milk. On the walk back from my errand I found the Everglades City Bank building. A rather big sign out front read "The Bank Building is Open", so I wandered over to see. As I approached the building, a woman came over to me to ask if I wanted a room. I had noted the sign on the building said Bed & Breakfast, so I was not too surprised by this inquiry.

I told her, "No thank you. I was just curious about the bank." She said, "It's not a bank anymore but if you want a room, I have some available." I politely declined the offer of the room and told her I thought, given the sign out front, that perhaps some of the bank history had been preserved. She said, "No, we don't have a bank here, but you can have a room if you want." I declined the offer yet again. She offered me a room at least two more times after that before I could get away to head back to the boat.

Everglades City Bank c. 1926
(now a B&B)

I knew we were almost ready to untie our lines and pull away from the dock, so as I entered the Rod & Gun Club building for the last time I got my cellphone camera out and got busy taking some last minute memories with me. The Rod & Gun Club is fascinating as the more you look around, the more you see.

Street Entrance to the Club

Found this guy hanging around the bar

Alligator skin etc. hung on walls

Grandfather Clock in Lobby

We left the dock just after 11:00 a.m. Clark wanted to be sure to have enough water under the boat, so we had to wait until we had a rising tide. He estimated a 5-hour trip to our stop for the night.

Goodbye Rod & Gun Club

Goodbye Everglades City, Florida

One last look back 

To reach Marathon in the Florida Keys, we needed to break the trip into two parts -- just over 40 nautical miles each. We decided to stay at the Little Shark River anchorage in the Everglades National Park. For part of the trip we had to go out into the Gulf of Mexico. Clark carefully checked the wave heights and wind directions to make his travel plans. He chose well.

Flat waters on the Gulf for our trip down the coast.

Within the limits of the Everglades National Park, fish traps are not allowed. Once outside those limits it resembles a mine field, literally.

A Proverbial Mine Field of Traps in the Gulf of Mexico
(see the fuse???)

We arrived at the anchorage just before 4:30 - about 30 minutes over Clark's 5-hour travel-time estimate. As we pulled into the anchorage, several others boats were also arriving and selecting their spots for the night.

Little Shark River Anchorage in
Everglades National Park

Popular Stopping Spot for Boats heading to the Keys

The anchorage provided a peaceful and picturesque place to spend the night. Hoping not to be attacked by mosquitoes, Clark was ready with the camera as the sun began to set.

Sunset in the Florida Everglades

Sunset Reflections

The Everglades National Park is so vast and remote that we had no cell service, no internet, no television, and no radio stations. Clark did a scan on the FM radio, and it went all the way through without finding a single station! Good thing I had a novel to read except that we turned off all the lights so as not to attract the mosquitoes. Well, then good thing I had my Kindle with the built in reading light. Modern technology wins out after all.

Clark and I are the proverbial night owls, so we found it difficult to fall asleep when we decided to go to bed at 9:30. Since we had been sitting around in total darkness, we decided we might as well turn in. As we laid there trying to fall asleep, we reminisced about the places we have visited on the Great Loop trip and tried to remember in reverse order all the places we had been in the order we visited them. Impossible exercise! I cheated and pulled out my cellphone where I have cataloged each place we stayed and the dates we stayed there. Even knowing the names of the places, we had trouble remembering some of the stops.

Recently, the boat has been making some odd sounds at night that we have never heard before. Various folks we have met here in Florida gave us a variety of explanations such as "It's the barnacles collecting on the bottom of your boat". "My goodness, the noise is so loud and frequent, we must be covered in them", I thought when I heard this. Clark decided to do some research - "Thanks Google!"

                     As a cruiser, when you get to the warmer waters in Florida and further south, you may hear noisy crackling sounds coming from beneath your boat’s hull at night. The noise can be shocking if you do not know what you are hearing.  The sound may be described as bacon cooking in a frying pan, the crackling of dry wood burning or Rice Krispies in a bowl of milk.

Clark found out that the culprit is snapping shrimp. He said that as we left the Everglades and reached Marathon the snap, crackle and pop should diminish.

One-inch long 'snapping shrimp'

We still heard some snapping during the night at the Everglades anchorage. Was it my imagination or had the frequency and volume appeared to have lessened? We shall have to see if we still hear the noises in the Florida Keys.

The trip from the anchorage to the Keys was long and mostly uneventful. We put way points into the GPS system before shutting everything down the night before, so we were ready to go in the morning. The waters were calm again - Clark did his homework well. We played 'dodge-em' all the way as we had a crab trap "mine field" for the majority of the trip. As we traveled along, Clark periodically gave me an update on the distance to the next way point while I either read my novel or played my cellphone games to pass the time.

Along the way we suddenly heard our boat name, Sea Moss, being called over the VHF radio. Velo-mer saw us via the AIS and recognized us. We met them way back in New Buffalo on Lake Michigan and have not seen them since. Clark chatted with Bob over the radio for a while discussing planned destinations, etc. Velo-mer was headed in the opposite direction to us, so we eventually said our farewells not sure when we may cross paths again.

We had planned for a speed of 8 knots, but with the current against us we could not make that speed, so the trip to the Keys took about an hour longer than we had hoped. We arrived at 3:00, and immediately we met folks we recognized. The folks on the boat next to us, Corkscrew, whom we have met twice before helped tie our lines as we docked. Then, just down a few slips from us, I saw and yelled hello to Liz from Knot Sew Easy. She came over to say hello, and we learned from her that we would see a number of familiar faces staying here.

After settling in to our slip, Clark went up to the marina office to ask them a few questions. When he came back to the boat, he said that we had two choices -- move to a different slip now or be told we had to move the boat a couple of times during our stay. We had not had time to get attached to our slip, so we decided to move now and save aggravation later. We said au revoir to Corkscrew, pulled in our lines, and moved to a more permanent spot. We plan to be here at this marina for the next 6 to 8 weeks. Already Clark is worried that he will get antsy with being in one place for such an extended stay.

I left Clark washing the salt off the boat and walked over to the Faro Blanco* lighthouse for "dock"tails with JoAnn and Jim from Namaste who, after we moved the boat, were in the neighboring slip. Every day the weather is nice, whoever is around meets at the lighthouse for "dock"tails. I met some new folks (not loopers) and heard the local scuttlebutt which I shared with Clark when I got back to the boat.

* Faro Blanco is an English name for lighthouse evolved from an ancient lighthouse Pharos of Alexandria.