Seems like every day brings with it a surprise agenda. We had no intention of pulling out our dinghy and going on a trip exploring the mangroves on Tuesday, but that is precisely what we did. The weather forecast on Monday told of thunderstorms throughout the day on Tuesday. Well, they got that one way wrong! We got a brief showing of rain around 10:00 a.m., and then the sun came out begging us to throw our plans to the wind and go out and enjoy the day.
It is tax season after all, so Clark planned to spend time during the rainy day pulling tax paperwork together. When I heard that several other folks planned on exploring in their dinghies, I wanted to go. The sun was out in force and the seas were calm as could be! We had one problem though as everyone else that planned to go touring has bigger and therefore faster motors on their dinghies than we do. Our 4 HP is no challenge to those with 15 HP. Nevertheless, we decided we could have a good time and get out in the sun even if we could not keep up with the others!
We ate lunch and left on our dinghy ride about 2:00. The objective of the trip was to go from the Florida Bay under the 7-mile bridge to the Atlantic Ocean side of Marathon in the Florida Keys to explore the mangroves. It did not help our travel time along the way that Clark received a phone call that could not be denied shortly after we left Faro Blanco. Worse yet, he had to slow the boat down to almost idle speed to hear the call. Putt, Putt, Putt! We slowly made our way to the bridge.
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| Bridge separating Florida Bay from the Atlantic Ocean |
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| Boot Key Harbor |
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| Boot Key Harbor (where we kayaked recently) |
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| A catamaran sailboat called Double Wide |
Instead of following the same path through Boot Key that we took in the kayaks, we turned off and made our way through the mangroves. As we puttered along we saw several boats at anchor with a bow anchor out front and lines tying the stern of the boat to the mangroves. Those mangrove roots are very strong! I guess even strong enough to act as a mooring and hold a boat!
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| Boats anchored along mangroves |
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| Working our way into the mangroves (we saw several kayaks in here) |
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| Looked similar to the trip we took on the air boat in the Everglades |
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| The mangroves became more and more dense as we explored |
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| Clark tried to keep going but I told him, "NO!" We ran out of headroom to go any further. |
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| As we backed out of the mangroves, we found two women in kayaks coming out. They passed by us and we ended up following them out for a while until we found a place to pass. |
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| Jane and Ben from Jammin Jane (picture originally posted by Jane on Facebook) |
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| Ev and Clark from Sea Moss exploring by dinghy (picture originally posted by Jane on Facebook) |
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| Sister Creek |
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| Sister Creek |
When we arrived at Sombrero Beach, I got very excited. I had not really thought about it before, but as we boated in this area, it suddenly occurred to me that we were back in the Atlantic Ocean!!! For the first time on this trip, I felt like we are making our way home instead of traveling further away. We are clearly more than half-way to New Jersey now, but it only just struck me when I was actually sitting in my dinghy in the Atlantic Ocean that we are heading home! It was a great feeling! Although there is continually excitement that comes with boating living, I do miss my friends, family, and home.
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| Sombrero Beach |
As we made our way back, we passed Bob and Liz from Knot Sew Easy. I looked right at them, but they were busy enjoying the scenery, so I do not believe they saw us.
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| Dinghy Dog Crockett Up ahead - Bob and Liz from Knot Sew Easy In front of them - Carole and Tim from Liquid Assets Picture taken from Jammin Jane boat (picture originally posted by Jane on Facebook) |
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| Liz and Bob from Knot Sew Easy (picture originally posted by Jane on Facebook) |
After dropping me off at our dock, Clark went back out with the dinghy to play around. He wanted to see if he could get the dinghy "up on plane". With my added weight, it was impossible to get the dinghy to lift out of the water. He also found that he had to remove his depth sounder from the dinghy to get it to plane.
On my way to docktails, I saw someone walking along the dock who told me that no one was out there. After a restroom stop, however, I decided to stroll out there anyway and was pleasantly surprised to find a small crowd had gathered. We talked until the sun went down. The business manager stopped by to talk to us for a while.
We learned that both the Bay side and the ocean side business sites for Faro Blanco were totally destroyed in the 2009 Hurricane Wilma which according to Wikipedia was "the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean". The bay side where we are staying only recently opened. Paperwork has begun on the ocean-side location, but permits will take at least 8 months to secure before restoration construction work can begin.
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| Sunset from Faro Blanco Lighthouse |
It must have been all the fresh air. I certainly cannot say it was due to hard work. I found myself exhausted at the ridiculously early hour of 9:30 and went to bed. Several times just before retiring I found myself nodding off over my Kindle. It was definitely time to retire. The blog just had to wait for another day!
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