After abandoning our planned trip to the Dry Tortugas, we headed back up the Keys the morning of April 5th. As we passed Boca Chica Naval Air Station eleven naval aircraft took off within a few minutes of each other; eight F18 fighters, two P3 Orions, and one S3 Viking. We assumed that it was a routine training exercise although Karrie did joking ask, “Are we under attack?” The next morning we learned that the US had attacked an airbase in Syria. Maybe not just a standard training exercise after all.

Later that day we had another “fly-by”, but of the aquatic variety. Several spinner dolphin joined us darting quickly by the boat and in front of us. Spinners are small dolphin with grayish white side markings. They are beautiful and boy are they fast! They are also know for their spinning leaps, but they did not show off their arial acrobatics for us.

Our first port of call was Boot Key Harbor in Marathon. Arriving at the harbor we called the marina and they asked if we had been there before to which I replied “Yes, we were on mooring ball mike-seven” (M-7). The harbormaster came back with “Why don’t you take that ball again since you know where it is and it is open”. What a surprise. We felt like old timers. Many of the same boats were still around us including one family that wanted to buddy boat with us to Dry Tortugas but never made it down to Key West.

We stayed in Boot Key for three days and then headed to Islamorada where we dropped the hook at the Lorelei anchorage again. As soon as the anchor was set, I jumped in the dinghy and sped over to the Islamorada Fish Company to stock up on smoked fish dip and clam chowder. IFC makes the best fish dip! And the clam chowder was really good for lunch with the cool weather we were having.

From Islamorada it was another day’s cruise to Pumpkin Key at the northern end of Key Largo. The next morning before we left Pumpkin Key for Miami I saw a disturbance in the water astern of the boat. Watching that area I soon spotted a few porpoise (bottle nosed dolphin) surface and then several others. I called Karrie out to watch, and we immediately started spotting them all around. There were around seven to ten areas that we would see them surfacing and with three to five in a group we are guessing that there was as many as 30 to 50 dolphins by us. We would see groups as large as five surface together. Some were making deep dives indicated by their tails extending straight up as they went under. While most of the activity was about a hundred yards behind us, a few came very close to the boat, one surfacing right by us (as captured in today’s photo). We guessed that they were having a feeding frenzy which was confirmed when I saw a large school of mullet swim past the boat and another time I saw a dolphin flip a captured mullet into the air. The feeding continued for at least a half hour and we delayed our departure watching the show.

Leaving Pumpkin Key we sailed up Biscayne Bay toward Miami. The weather outlook was not encouraging for the next week so we anchored on the west side of Key Biscayne where we would have protection from the strong easterly winds coming our way.