We left Marathon on Tuesday 3/15 and dropped the hook at Horseshoes Key where we found ourselves in the midst of the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge. We weren't disappointed, and saw a plethora of wildlife - herons, ospreys, hawks, kingfishers and ever present cormorants, to name some.

We enjoyed it so much, we spent a full day at anchor there before moving down to Tarpon Belly Key in the Cudjoe Channel. Lots more people there, fishing and day tripping, but as the sun went down we had the place to ourselves and found even more Great Whites there than at Horseshoes Key. And, we caught two Blue Runners leaving Cudjoe Channel, so have enjoyed very nice sushi for a couple of evenings.

Today we left Cudjoe Channel and motor sailed down to the Key West NW Channel entrance, dodging lobster pots by the hundreds the whole way. Turning down the channel we got a nice 12 knot breeze on the Genoa and with the outgoing tide scooted along at 7 knots. We are staying in the Conch Harbor Marina here rather than anchor out, which will let us easily experience the night life of Key West. Expensive, but we want to see the old town at our leisure.

Sunday night or Monday we'll head to somewhere on the west coast of Florida.

We haven't been loading up photos, because we try to use our aircard judiciously, so we'll put up the photos with more of the cruise on our main blog Alizee after we're finally back on land.