Marathon to Little Shark—April 23

 Saying good bye to Boot Key Harbor, rested and ready to move on, we dropped the mooring line from Aurora’ bow and slid under the Seven Mile Bridge as the sun was climbing above the horizon on Tuesday morning.  Northeast winds at 22knots made reefing the sails and continually adjusting necessary during the morning, then afternoon the winds slacked to 15 knots and made for a nice motor sail. 

Marking our way points for the anchorage just south of Little Shark the last time through made it easy to navigate right back to the same spot which had protected us from the strong easterly.  Other sail boats passed us and went closer to the river’s entrance and we wondered at the time why they wanted to be closer to the northern point of land.  A slight breeze, 5 knots or so around sunset kept the bugs at bay and made the cabin cool without running the generator and air conditioning.  This is going to be a great night’s sleep.   At about 10:00 p.m. it became obvious why it would have been great to be by a land mass blocking the northerly breeze.  First the winds came out of the south turning us completely around, then settled on a northerly direction at around 17 gusting to 20 knots, and our bumpy ride began.   And as always the question, “Will our anchor hold in these winds?”  Well it did in the 70mph winds in the storm of Atlantic City, so why not tonight.  Dennis was comfortable and confident enough to go on to bed, but I read, wrote and checked our location by ascending the steps from cabin to deck about 5 times to make sure the moon, anchor lights to the north and south were still in the same places and not slipping into different positions on the horizon.  Around midnight when the winds finally subsided I was able to climb into our berth for a shortened but very restful night’s sleep.