Comfortable in Marathon

Dragonboat races - oops!  One capsized....

Heading out to the starting line

Aren't these funny!

Fighting the waves and moving right along!

I swear I can still hear the drummer!

Just a peacful day at the beach

Had to post another sunset

All puffed up and no place to go

If you look close you can see the tenacles behind him

I had never seen one of these before - actually
quite pretty - from the dinghy!

Beautiful day at the beach

We’ve been spending our days (and nights) in Marathon“trying to relax”.  Ha!  Just kidding – no need to try – it just comes naturally.   There isn’t a whole lot to write about when we’re not traveling.  However, I did want to catch everyone up on a few things.

Since my last post – we’ve made several trips to Key West.  The last time we went we discovered the Southernmost Post of the VFW.  It turned out to be a really nice place to hang out. (nice place to hang out = cheap beer)  In fact we bought a tee shirt and two beers for what it cost us for two beers at another local hangout. (Shanna Key to be exact).  Figure that out!  While we were in Key West we decided to check into the cost of slips at the City Marina.  $1200 a month for the off season!  Won’t be moving our boat there anytime soon!  Thank goodness we have a car and can drive there whenever we get a notion to.  We also checked in the Elks Lodge there but it’s only open on Thursday evenings for their meetings.  What’s up with that??  This was the one on Flagler and not the “improved” one we ran across back in December.

We go out in the dinghy quite often – exploring the area.  We saw our first Portuguese Man-o-War jellyfish.  It was huge and all puffed up!  It wasn’t really very far away but at least it was outside the swimming area at the beach.  This area has been closed before due to sightings of these jellyfish.    Glad I wasn’t in the water!!

Last week they held the annual Dragonboat Races here at Sombrero Beach.  These boats are about 40 feet long and about 4 feet wide.  There are twenty people per team.  Eighteen rowers - one steerman and the drummer.  There were several teams but we were told that the count was down this year due to some mix up.  Several teams come from all over the country - and there are the local teams as well.  It was pretty cool to watch.  It was pretty windy and one team capsized.  No foul  - they finally made it to shore and dumped out the water.  They did finally finish.  All the teams seemed to be having a ball.  I think it was more about partying than about actual racing.......  :-)

Things really start winding down here when the “high season” ends.  Several people leave and spend the summer either at home or somewhere cooler at least.  It’s been pretty hot here the last couple of weeks.  But being from Missouri – we can handle it!  

We decided to go to the Flea Market that is held on Big Pine Key every weekend.  That was definitely a bust.  There were only a few booths open and two of them were owned by the same people!  We’ve been there before back in the winter and it was packed.  Oh well…..  Saved us some money – oh, I did buy a hat….  :-)

Mike brought home a great piece of driftwood from the beach this morning.  Now, isn’t this exciting!  I told you there isn’t much going on right now!  Ha!  The cruiser next to us is selling his sailboat and moving back to California.  His “junk” seems to becoming our “junk”.  Every time I turn around it seems Mike is bringing in more stuff that Bill wants to get rid of.    We need to head out before we become landlocked!

We will be going home for about a week in June.  Then when we return we will ready the boat for another adventure.  We plan to head up the west coast of Florida to Anna Maria Island.  We have family that will be there July 12-19.  We are anxious for them to see our “home”.  After that we will probably work our way back toward the Keys again.  We will definitely be taking our time – spending some time in Venice area where we have friends and then some time at Ft Myers Beach.    I really did like Ft Myers Beach when we were there last year. 

Hopefully next time I will have more “news” to share.

Stay tuned

Admiral “C”