Sailing Last Mango

3-28-16   We left the anchorage heading back to Key West for a day or two and were forced to motor sail the whole way due to very little wind. We made our way to Garrison Bite and grabbed a mooring ball after repeatedly call the harbor master without any reply. We finally got them on the phone and were directed on how to navigate the dinghy to their location to pay our daily fee. It was quite a trek from our mooring to the harbor master, total time one way was about 20 minutes. I know understand why people complain about the mooring field being so far from the dinghy dock. We got checked in and took badly needed showers since the past several days the heat index has been in the high 90’s. After showers Karen and I walked over to Duval street and a few drinks. They tasted great and went down well, we could've stayed and drank away the night but common sense prevailed and we made our way back to Mango and dinner. Karen wanted me to take this picture of 2 young girls playi...

3-24-16   Today is the day we chose to leave Marathon / Boot Key Harbor. I couldn’t wait to leave, we’ve been in Boot Key for 31 days and we did enjoy ourselves but I’d had itchy feet for at least 2 weeks and I think Karen has also. This morning we went ashore dropped off shower keys, picked up more water and Karen went to the library to print out our state tax return and mail it. We decided to leave by noon which worked out as planned. We had one more stop on the way out at Burdine’s for fuel and ice. We found Pat, Tim, Jack and Nate waiting to catch our lines as we hung a u-turn into the fuel slip. We put in about 20 gallons of diesel and once again gave hugs said our goodbyes, I even  saw a couple tears in Karen’s eyes. Our last Marathon Sunset for the year. We picked today to leave because the winds were forecast to be East at 12 to 15 range which is perfect for us. What we found was East 15 to 25 which only required us to unfurl a portion of the jib and aw...