Depart: Everglades National Park, Gulf of Mexico anchorage 8:15
Arrive: Bahia Honda State Park, Florida Keys 2:10
Distance: 46 NM
We traveled inside the Everglades National Park boundaries as long as possible to avoid crab traps on our way to the Florida Keys. As we traveled through this area, a pair of frisky dolphins gave us quite a show. I have seen dolphins in paid-for shows that did not give us the performance we got today.
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| Dolphin pair giving us a great performance on the water |
The two dolphins liked to jump. The came straight for the boat, got in front of us, and then did synchronized jumps at least six feet into the air. They jumped twice, but of course, by the time the camera appeared they had decided to quit. In addition to dolphins, I saw a sea turtle swim by. Of course, he too was camera shy.
The main event for today's travel, however, became "trap dodging". In trap-infested waters, I think the auto pilot is more of a curse than an asset. As soon as Clark set the auto pilot up to follow our course line, a trap would appear directly on our course line. We hypothesized that the traps have a built-in mechanism, magnetic perhaps, that is designed to get our auto pilot to change course to head for the nearest trap.
Many fisherman lay out their traps in rows. Some however must be extremely lazy and just drop them helter skelter in no orderly pattern whatsoever. The "helter skelter" approach makes it hard to navigate through them. We went through one particularly bad section.
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| Just passed through a "mine field" of traps every little white dot is yet another trap float |
We spent over three hours dodging traps in the Gulf before finally arriving at the Florida Keys.
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| Passing by opening in old bridge on Moser Channel |
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| Between the bridges ... Bridge to Pigeon Key on left and Rte 1 Bridge on right |
There we found that the traps we encountered on the Gulf were nothing compared to what we had to deal with on the Atlantic Ocean side. Seas were rougher and traps were everywhere. Clark could not use auto pilot here. He could hardly steer manually around them there were so many. With the stiff steering on our boat, he definitely got his workout in for the day!
Clark decided that he wanted to visit Bahia Honda today before settling in at Marathon for the rest of the month. I was ever so happy to see our escape route from the trap zone coming up shortly.
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| Old RR bridge in front is missing a section for boats to pass through to Bahia Honda State Park |
After clearing the two bridges into Bahia Honda State Park, we dropped anchor planning to use the dinghy to go in and explore the park. We had strong current and strong winds as we anchored. The first attempt failed. The second attempt held. We put out 150 feet of line to make sure we had a good hold on the bottom.
Once we were convinced we had a strong anchoring, we worked to get the dinghy down and ready to go exploring. This, unfortunately, did not go as planned. Clark climbed in and got all set to go. He told me to wait until he had it started, and wait I did. The engine sputtered and choked and stopped multiple times. He could not keep it running.
After several attempts at keeping it going that all resulted in a stall, Clark decided that maybe if he ran the engine more open for a bit, it would clear out the problem. With the fast current, however, he was afraid he would not be able to row the boat back to "Sunset Delight" if the engine failed. We tied a long line to the dinghy that allowed him to drive the boat around the area to test out the outboard.
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| Clark driving dinghy while tethered to "Sunset Delight" |
As Clark fought with the outboard, he noticed that the sailboat we saw come in had disappeared out of sight. "Now where did he go?" Clark wondered. Since he had no success with the outboard, he called the park ranger to find out the docking situation at the park. The park ranger told Clark that last year we could not have docked at the park. As a result of the rebuild after Hurricane Irma, the channel to the docks has been dredged and can accept large boats with deeper drafts now where, in the past, only small boats could come in.
After a detailed discussion concerning the width of our vessel versus the width of the channel into the park's docks, Clark decided to pull in the dinghy, pull up the anchor, and go check out the docks for the night. With all the messing about with the anchoring and dinghy nonsense, we had lost almost two hours of time we wanted to use exploring the park.
In addition to the woman working for the park system, the folks from the sailboat greeted us at the dock and helped us with our lines. As we said our hellos, the sailboat folks invited us to join them at the picnic tables later as they planned to grill "brats". We agreed we would look for them later on.
First we wanted to take a bit of a look around the area. For our first stop, Clark chose the gift shop for a bite of ice cream (me) and raspberry sorbet (him). As we ate our dripping-in-the-heat treats, we walked around the local area.
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| Tree Colony Bahia Honda Key Unusual plant life lives here and is often studied by botanists |
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| Obligatory signpost to far-off places |
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| Beach on the Atlantic Ocean side of the park |
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| Another view on the Atlantic side |
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| Beach on the Gulf side and view of bridge out to the Atlantic Ocean |
As we walked by the beach on the Gulf side, we found the trio from the sailboat cooking their "brats". We stopped to talk, and once again, they offered to share their grill and hot coals with us. Since Clark cannot eat port, we went back to the boat to grab some all-beef hot dogs to throw on the grill.
When we got to the campsite, I put the hot dogs on the grill, and Clark wandered off to take pictures of the sky. A storm was definitely coming our way. Our timing was the worst!
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| Ominous sky over Bahia Honda Key |
I did not really want to cook on the grill. I had a quick, reheat dinner all planned and ready. However, I figured, since Clark wanted to join these folks, he could cook on the grill. Instead, when it came time to cook, he was nowhere to be seen as he was off with the camera.
We had noticed a couple of sprinkles of rain, but thought "this too shall pass" and decided to ignore it. Well, that was a big mistake! Although it was a relatively short-lived rainstorm, it brought a downpour. At first we hovered under a tree to get some shelter, but it soon became obvious that the tree would not do the job. The sailboat folks grabbed their stuff and fled back to the sailboat.
I braved the elements and went to reclaim my hot dogs from the grill. By the time I had scooped them up to carry back to the boat, I was very wet. By the time Clark and I made it back to our boat, I was soaked. Everything was drenched - my hat and coat sagged from the weight of the water, and my sneakers squished as if I had worn them to go swimming in.
Water poured off of me as I stood on the back of the boat trying to get my shoes off and drop my wet hat and coat. I had to ring the water out of my socks. Given my miserable state, I was cranky, irritable, and disgusted by the entire fiasco.
We dried everything off, including ourselves, and sat down to eat our meal alone. Perhaps we will meet up again with the sailing trio tomorrow. We can only hope for better weather!
As the storm passed, Clark got one more picture for the blog update.
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