Marathon and Key West

Originally posted at www.svsweetescape.com

Christmas night we drove to Fort Lauderdale and met Daughter Jennifer and Grandson Cameron at the airport after their flights from Milwaukee and then drove them back to Marathon, arriving at about 3 AM.

We had one free day in Marathon, albeit a short one because everyone slept in following the late night.  That morning, Cameron found that Santa had indeed visited Sweet Escape and he spent some time opening his gifts.  

Brian and Ryan then took Cameron out for a little fishing in Sister’s Creek while the girls laid out in the sun on Sweet Escape.  Cameron has decided that he is now our official dinghy driver and that anytime we have to go anywhere in the dinghy that he will drive.  The fishing trip was mostly a bust with Ryan catching the only fish, another weird looking toadfish.

On Wednesday we went in to the marina and made arrangements for an extra pump out for Thursday before we left for Key West.  With the additional crew, the tank filled up quickly and we did not want to sail for Key West with an almost full waste tank. 

Thursday morning Ryan and Erin went snorkeling on Sombrero Reef with a local excursion service.  They would then drive and meet us in Key West at Conch Harbor Marina where we had a slip reserved for five nights. 

After the pump out boat finally arrived and emptied our waste tank we slipped our mooring and headed out bound for Key West with Jenny and Cameron aboard.  We had a beautiful day and motor sailed the 50 miles to Key West and arrived at around 4 PM.  After getting tied up and checked in we went to dinner at the Turtle Kraal Restaurant.

Conch Harbor Marina is located in the heart of Key West and for the next several days we spent a lot of time walking around getting the lay of the land.  We spent time on Duval Street both during the day and at night and copious amounts of adult beverages were consumed.  We also spent some time by the pool and additional adult beverages were consumed there.

Which brings us to New Years Eve.  Key West has become a new years eve destination of sorts with CNN carrying the festivities live.  There are two primary events.  The first is the Conch Shell Drop which occurs outside Sloppy Joe’s Bar where a giant conch shell descends during the countdown at midnight.

The other is outside the Bourbon Street Pub, a gay bar at the end of Duval Street where “Sushi” the drag queen descends in a giant red high heeled shoe at midnight.  Naturally the latter is the event carried by CNN.  

Drag queens not being our cup of tea - we opted for the conch shell drop at Sloppy Joe’s.  Brian, Judy, Erin and Ryan attended while Jenny and Cameron stayed behind on Sweet Escape.  This turned out to be a mob scene and I think we were the only people in attendance who were not at some level of inebriation, us having destroyed our quota of brain cells earlier in our stay.  None the less the crowd was pretty well behaved and we all enjoyed being there.

On Tuesday it was time to leave.  We said goodbye to the kids who would be leaving us in Key West and driving back to Wisconsin.  We then left the marina and headed back to Marathon - this was a ten hour slog through high winds and big wave right on the nose.  We arrived back at Boot Key Harbor in the dark and found that someone had taken our mooring.  Great, we were both exhausted after the passage from hell and now we had to search the mooring field in the dark for a vacant mooring.  After some looking, eagle-eye Judy saw one and we grabbed it for the evening.  We will have to straighten it all out on Wednesday.  

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