Marco Island to Little Shark (4-9-13)

Smokehouse Bay at Marco turned out to be a delightful anchorage, with only a five minute ride to a wonderful dinghy dock at Winn Dixie, and West Marine a few blocks from there.  In the evening Sharps, Kidwells and, Beers gathered on Aurora with us for snacks and cocktails sharing how to disengage mooring ball lines from props and other amusing antidotes. 

With a long day ahead to cover the 52 miles to Little Shark we were up washing clay off the anchor by 7:15 as were several others.  When traveling with a group you see how many little things can go wrong to slow cruisers down and make a long day even longer.  One boat was pulling up anchor at the same time we were, but as we exited the channel were nowhere in sight.  Come to find out their wash down system wouldn’t work to clean off the anchor and they spent an hour working on it before finally hauling bucket after bucket of water to the front of the boat putting them an hour behind schedule.  Another had to stop drop a hook in the channel and work on his rudder making him also have a much later start than planned.  Still another waited 45 minutes at the fuel dock.  Once underway, we were all treated to several hours of sailing on a southerly heading with winds out of the east, but as it often goes once we set our heading more eastward, sails were dropped and engines again purred.  Arrivals at Little Shark were at varied hours, but thankfully everyone, after solving all the unexpected issues in the morning settled tired but comfortably into the anchorage.  One last boater had to pull a crab pot off the prop after he arrived, with luckily no damage done.  Even with brisk east winds, which kept the bugs at bay, holding was excellent and the starry sky was just brilliant at this place known as Little Shark, part of the Everglades National Forest.

(At Little Shark we had no phone or internet service but will get the blog up to date tomorrow as we have good service now that we arrived here in Marathon this afternoon.)