The Google computers that run blogspot with this blog have been having a problem running the videos. All the blogs are reporting "video unavailable" for a week or so. If you tried to watch my scuba videos, just try in the next few days.

We're still just living in Marathon, enjoying ourselves, fishing, watching sunsets, Kathy's knotting, reading, etc. Temps have been 75 to 80 most days and sunny to partly sunny, although there's supposed to be a 30% to 50% chance of rain for the next 3 days. We have been intending to cruise to Key West, but I have been waiting for 2 solid days of low wave forecasts on the north side of the keys so we can anchor out on the Gulf side and look for lobsters. The weather and wave forecasts don't look good for that yet. We drove to Key West, just 50 miles down the keys, to see a movie (Up in the Air), get our favorite mango bread from a local artisan bakery and stop at the Parrot-dise Grill for a lobster reuben sandwich.

I have been fishing off our aft deck almost every morning. It's almost luxury fishing because when the tide is going out, you just drop a hook with a live shrimp off the aft deck and the tide takes it out into the channel while you enjoy your coffee and mango bread toast after breakfast. I usually catch 2 or 3 fish per hour for 2 or 3 hours. I've caught lots of Creval Jacks, pinfish (baitfish), ladyfish, one Pompano, this nice little Spanish Mackerel or Cero, and threw them all back. Kathy didn't want me to make shashimi from the Spanish Mackerel. There are a few sheepshead here, so I may try oysters to catch one sometime, but the oysters on the docks here are a different kind than up north and are very thin.

We'll be in the keys until February 10 to 15, depending on weather to run across the gulf back to Marco Island and then Sarasota.

I went scuba diving today out at Sombrero Reef, which is a nearby marine sanctuary coral reef. I went on a dive boat, of which there are many around here, because a fellow Hatteras Owner's Forum member, Pat Murphy, recommended it. There has been poor underwater visibility for the last week and today it was only 15 to 20 ft, but I went to see the reef anyway and was glad I did. It's a very nice reef with loads of tropical fish. In the videos, it may look "grainy" or cloudy, but that's exactly what I saw.


It was very nice to see a Queen Angelfish, which is one of my favorites and not very common.



There were lots of colorful fish swimming near the corals and then lots of barracuda swimming more out in the open water. When the barracudas would come near the smaller fish, they darted into the corals.


This foot long spiny puffer fish was not afraid of me or the barracudas, owing to his spines and the fact that he can puff up like a spiny basketball. Very hard to swallow.


There was a long thin trumpet fish, which usually hangs out vertically near the vertical branches of gorgonians or soft corals, looking like just another branch, until a small fish swims by and becomes dinner. At the end of this little clip there is a large midnight parrot fish too.

This evening, Kathy and I went with about a dozen other local dock mates to the Marathon High school benefit dinner, cooked and served by the high school culinary class. It was just OK, but a nice outing anyway.

Just enjoying Marathon Key today. It was 82 degrees and sunny all day.

This is our lunchtime view from the aft deck, right into the Atlantic Ocean, with beautiful turquoise water, Ospreys and Pelicans fishing in the flats, and constant little fish jumps near the boat. I caught one Pompano, two Crevale Jacks, and a Ladyfish by tossing a line off my aft deck at the dock. I released them all even though the Pompano would have been good to eat.

For dinner, we just had wine and cheese, salami, raw veggies and strawberries and watched the sunset. It was another glorious sunset this evening, and last night we went to a sunset party on the neighbors boat next door.

We're at Marathon Key, tied up to our favorite dock space where we can see sunsets directly into the Atlantic Ocean right from our aft deck. Very nice!

We left Marco Island just after dawn and passed the many condos on the beach as the sun rose. We did wonder how many of those new condos are still vacant though.








We crossed 100 miles of the Gulf from Marco Island to Marathon today, arriving in tome to get tied up, plugged in and watch the sunset. It wasn't one of those glorious sunsets, but as the sun dropped below a cloud shelf, it did look rather tropical. Kathy says I have too many sunset pictures anyhow.




Pods of dolphins picked us up 4 or 5 times as we crossed the gulf. They all just liked to surf the bow wave instead of surfing and jumping in the wake.

We'll be in the Florida Keys for 3 weeks or so, centering a few cruises out of Marathon.

Cruising again starts tomorrow!

The boat is all prepped, including the reinstalled FloScan fuel monitor, and stocked, including a wonderful mango pie from the local Paradise Deli on Marco Island. Today we took our car to Marathon Key, in the middle of the Florida Keys. Tomorrow we'll head out at sunrise and cruise the 100 miles to Marathon. The wave and weather reports look very good.

Back on the boat!

Daisy and I drove back from Chicago, arriving this evening. It was 10 degrees with a foot of snow in Chicago and it's 78 here and beautiful sunny weather. I'm picking up Kathy at the Ft. Lauderdale airport tomorrow so we can prep the boat and cruise to the Keys, maybe Tuesday, and stay for a month or so.

The boat all looks fine, just as we left it, and all ready to go, except I removed a FloScan fuel monitor in November, had it repaired by the FloScan factory in December and I now need to reinstall it before we go.