May 15, Marathon in the Keys

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At anchorage just south of the 7 Mile Bridge off of Marathon. The water is clean, clear and beautiful.

We both went for a great and cooling swim!

Dinner at Burdines, just a short dinghy ride into the harbor. We ate here last year as well. It is all outdoor seating, great pub food as well a small marina.

The harbor entrance from the ocean and our anchorage just past that last mangrove. It is beautifully calm out there except for the passing fishing boats. 

View going into Boot Key Harbor where the big marina (mooring ball marina) is. If we go in for weather, we have go through all this. 

And of course, we did. 

The next morning, we decided that the northeaster winds coming down will be quite strong so we would like to be inside tied to "something" other than sand. The City Marina at Marathon is mostly a mooring field consisting of 226 moorings. That's a lot of boats! It makes us a bit nervous going in there. 

Captain Bruce did a great job of maneuvering us in with a NE strong wind and nestled us into a mooring ball on the far end of our line of balls. They assign us T1. All the blue and black dots are the mooring field.

We were rewarded with a great sunset on our 1st night. The bigger part of the mooring field is behind us .

The next day we dinghy into to drop trash and pick up some filtered water and had to stop the motor to play with the manatees that were determined to visit us. These photos were taken from our dinghy.

A family quickly boarded their 2 small children on a paddle board to join us with the manatees. The kids were squealing and the manatees loved it. 

Today (Saturday May 15), our oldest granddaughter Jordan graduated from UNC at Chapell Hill, NC! 

Where has the time gone? We are so very proud of her. 

We sent her a congratulatory video but I can't show that because I'm crying. We couldn't be there because only 4 tickets were allowed per graduate. We watched the ceremony on live stream. 

Jordan! So proud of you!

The ceremony was social distanced and only 4 guests per graduates allowed and Dr Fauci was the keynote speaker.

We dinghied around scouting out an entrance to a restaurant we are interested in going to and found the stored lobster (or stone crab?) traps and the lobster boats. Stone crab season just closed. There is a long "block" of the traps and boats just for this company.