Living in Paradise

Hello everyone! I don't want our loyal readers to stop following our blog, so thought it was about time for an update. We are still in Boot Key Harbor hanging on a mooring and becoming part of the cruisers network here. Not too much has changed since our last update though. We have been enjoying the weather and doing lots of outdoor activities that we know and love, like running and roller blading. Steve even got a hockey stick and has been playing roller hockey. We've been invited to play tennis, but we'll have to do a little practice session as neither one of us has touched a racket in years! We also found out that there's bocci balls, but the set is missing the polena, so we're trying to find a golf ball to use as a replacement.

We also went diving again, this time at Sombrero Reef - about 6 NM off the Boot Key Harbor. When we inquired on our morning cruisers' net about other divers, we met another couple who were interested. Claus and Rose on a Gemini Cat, took us out on Gypsy Rose. Again, easier to dive from a cat than our sailboat. Also, Claus is a captain of a dive boat back home (in Canada), making two trips daily. So, again, it was nice to have help with our dive - mainly getting our equipment on and getting into the water, and then getting equipment off and getting back into the boat. Claus also kept an eye on us when we were under too. We also kept checking our location to make sure we didn't stray far from the boat. The waves at Sombrero light were higher than we would've liked, about 3 to 4 feet, but the water temperature was in the low 70s. The visibility was fair - 20 to 30 feet. We dove to about 30 feet. The fish were shyer here than they were at Molasses Reef. They pretty much stayed down in the reefs and didn't come up to the boat. That could be because the mooring we caught was surrounded mostly by sand and not directly over the reef. We did see quite a bit of fish once we were over the reefs. We also saw a huge stingray that was pretty cool. The pictures can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/sombrerodive (thanks John for the tip - I knew about it, but wasn't thinking about it).

We still have about a week and 1/2 here at Marathon and we are not sure of our plans after that time. We may stay here even longer and visit Key West by bus as we have been hearing that the anchorages in Key West are not that great. It is looking as though we will not go over to the Bahamas at this point, but that is not definite yet. So we'll keep you all posted as our plans develop.