Day 3 - Marathon to Key West — Captain Father John

Miles cruised 45, fuel purchased $0, slip fee $0, dingy dock fee $6.50, daily high temperate 83°f

Another incredible day of the sailing in the Florida Keys! The winds have backed to the NW so we are on a beam reach instead of dead downwind. Dead downwind is usually slow unless it is blowing 20 plus kts which it has been for the past two days. We were wing on wing for a while yesterday. Wing on wing is when you have the mainsail out on one side and the jib on the other side. If they are both full, you know you are dead downwind.

Our course from Marathon to Key West. We are the red triangle.

On Wednesday night the wind picked up just as we were about to grill our lamb chops and brussel sprouts. The lamb chops were cooked to perfection and the brussel sprouts were crisped on the grill. Add a nice house salad and it was another gourmet meal aboard Pilar.

We arrived in Key West at 3:00 pm. It was time for some shore leave. We had been onboard for 48 hours without stepping ashore. We found a place to anchor and Gabe lowered his dingy and we motored to the harbormaster’s office to buy a day pass for the dingy dock. We went to the dingy dock and it was so crowded that we would have been in the third row and had to climb over all the other dingy’s to get to the dock. We went back and tied up on the harbormaster’s dock.

Our mission in Key West was to buy a medium size conch shell for Mary Berkley (our Stuart neighbor). She wants to bring it back to California for her mother who is an avid shell collector.

Speaking of conch, we headed over to our all time favorite happy hour bar the Conch Republic for happy hour. It brought back memories of our six week holiday adventure during our Loop trip. Our next stop was Pepe’s for dinner. It is stone crab claw season so we ordered two servings for appetizers. The yellow tail snapper was outstanding.

Returning to a boat at anchor in a large mooring in the dark is always a challenge. You can see 100 anchor lights but which one is ours? Fortunately Gabe has a GPS in his dingy and plotted our course. It was like following a trail of electronic bread crumbs. We left the cockpit lights on to help us identify Pilar as well. No worries, we found her.

It is a quiet night on the hook in Key West so far. We will be up and out early to make the 66 mile trip to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. We will tour the fort and stay over night in the harbor. Several years ago my son JP and I along with Captain Tony Forns, his son Taylor, his father Evilio and Captain 1-800 Mark Sholtes went on a fishing charter with John Potter. We filled the boat with snapper and grouper. That night in the harbor in the Dry Tortugas we fished off the boat. We caught a huge tarpon, a Goliath grouper and a shark. JP fought the tarpon for an hour before he brought him in. Good times!

Bonus photo