We spent 3 nights at anchor here closer to other boats than we would normally anchor but this protected harbor allows us to loosen our perimeter needs for when we swing around with a wind change. Our number finally came up for a mooring ball yesterday. It will be better to be on a mooring ball if bad weather hits as a mooring restricts the swing radius and they do not drag like anchors do. Speaking of weather, it feels like summer here. It's so cool to sweat again (never thought we would enjoy that so much). Now we have to be careful not to get sunburned or too much sun exposure. Showers and fresh sunscreen daily. We got a chance to met up with our Houston friends Dean & Katie on Our Way Too, and also with Steve Arnold on Chanticleer. Steve is an old salt who has been cruising for a while now and is a wealth of knowledge. His wife Roberta will be back from visiting family in about a week so we look forward to visiting with both of them before we all head out for more adventure.
Boot Key Harbor is a city in itself. The city of Marathon owns the mooring field and provides a pavilion to hang out in, WIFI, TVs, showers, laundry, and trash facilities. This places is a well-organized, well-run machine with cruising coming and leaving daily. Everyone is very friendly. It's great to be among like-minded sailors in such a community. Their is a even harbor net that we listen to each morning on the VHF radio and they announce organized events (yoga, softball, dominoes, socials, etc.) and then new arrivals announce who they are, where they're from, followed by those departing and where they're going. It ends with a buy, sell, give-away exchange. All of this is moderated by a net manager. Maybe we can sell our laser printer that does not work off our inverter. On that same note, we mentioned before that we bought spare coffee pots. We no longer have a spare as our spare is now our primary coffee pot. They don't seem to like the inverter either.

When we weighed anchor yesterday to move to our mooring ball, which we had already scouted out its location in our dinghy, we knew exactly where to go. So what did we do... You guessed it; we picked up the wrong mooring ball despite our textbook approach to grabbing the mooring ball. No sooner than getting our second line secured on the ball, when we discovered our mistake. We got to practice mooring twice. Successful both times. We use a set of headphones that allow us to communicate to each other when anchoring and/or mooring and they really help as Ed is at the helm and Cheryl is at the bow "pointy end" of the boat. The headphone set is apply named "Marriage Savers." That maybe an over statement of their utility but when there is 40 feet of wind between the person at the bow and the person at the helm when you are trying to anchor or pick up a mooring ball as the wind blows you off, well....that is where shouting of new curse words are invented! The Marriage Savers allow us to communicate at normal tones of voice and each excel at their task.

We will be staying here for a few weeks at least so we will update the Boot Key gallery with pictures as we capture them and with blog posts as interesting things occur that we hope you enjoy reading.

We were unable to capture the magnificent anchorage at night with all the boat lights illuminating the sky. It is a wonderful skyline to watch. There are pictures at bootkeyharbor.com which capture the view better than we could but it still doesn't do it justice.