Cruising Down the Keys

Sunset at Mallory Square, Key West

Well, we made it!  After three years of talking about “wintering in the Keys,” we finally reached Key West.  This is what sunset looked like last night at Mallory Square.  That’s where everyone (and we mean everyone) goes each night to watch the sun go down.  There are street performers and street merchants and lots of things going on.  We can go there every evening, if we want to, as it is a very short walk from the boat.  And, the sunsets from our boat are not bad either, especially when accompanied by the Coast Guard playing taps and firing a cannon!

Evening at Hawks Cay

From Key Largo, the two-day cruise took us down almost the entire chain of Keys.  We again chose the “outside” route, i.e., Hawk Channel, which runs between the Keys and a large barrier reef in the Atlantic Ocean.   We stopped for the night just north of Marathon on Vaca Key, a favorite place for cruisers.  Instead we picked Hawks Cay on Duck Key.  It’s a marina and resort development totally surrounded by a moat-like set of canals.  An interesting challenge to enter and depart, but a beautiful, calm setting once “in the moat”.

View from the Bridge

The waters of the Keys, including Hawk Channel, are amazingly beautiful, even better than the pictures & movies you may have seen-  1000 different shades of blue ranging from “sky” through turquoise to almost navy-  and it’s all incredibly clear.  In both Key Largo and Hawks Cay, we could see the coral under the boat quite clearly… perhaps too clearly as it looked much closer than it was!!

The prevailing northern winds of winter accompanied us the entire trip so the water was a little rocky at times, but the extra speed provided by the tail winds was fun!!    The only problem we encountered were crab pots!!  Lines of them that we could run between but also randomly scattered, thick nests of them that gave us great practice in vigilant, close quarters maneuvering!!

Pretty water; ugly crab pot!

Sojourner’s berth is at the city marina in Key West Bight so we are right in the middle of everything- and just far enough to the side of the historic seaport district that we miss the nightly music wars of the many bars and restaurants lining the dock area (oh darn!)-  We are truly within walking distance of everything “Key West” and though we have the car, we’ll probably not use it much-

We’ve decided to make this truly a “winter in the Keys”, so in about a month, after the holidays and a string of visitors, we’ll head back to Key Largo rather than continue around and up the west coast of Florida.  We’ll post again from here for sure and will share our Key Largo adventures when we make the return visit there in late January-early February.  [More pix of the Cruise Down the Keys]