Friday January 4: Banana Bay Marina in Marathon

The sunset was nice at Long Key Bight but the sunrise was even better!

A windless night as predicted - a nice start to the day for sure.

Anchorages like this are always nice for a number of reasons but the downside is the shallowness of them.

Most of the water we were in coming in was about 5 feet - pretty true to the chartplotter depths indicated. Once in though the way out is very easy!

Just follow the pink and black dashed line! The thought is that if we didn't hit anything on the way in, go the same way back out and we're good to go. It works well - particularly if I actually follow the line like I should :-)

It was very calm as we moved from the bight back into the channel and then under the bridge to return to the bay side of the Keys.

Our marina is on the bay side so it saved us about 10 miles by crossing to the bay under this bridge near Long Key rather than staying outside on the ocean side and crossing under the 7-mile bridge at Marathon.

The trade off were the zillions of crab pots (or lobster - we don't really know) EVERYWHERE - including the channel.

In this water the pots are pretty easy to see - and so are the lines of old crab pots that no longer have a buoy attached. Instead the old line is just floating there under the surface waiting for me to run it over and entangle it in the prop!

A couple of close calls but fortunately no issues.

Steve found new use for one of the large round fenders we carry.

The water was so clear and calm that he just couldn't resist watching as we passed over large sponges and small fish along with one rather large fish (probably a barracuda).

Guess he got tired of standing :-)

We pulled into Banana Bay about 1 or so. It was like we had never left!

Many of the same folks as were here last year along with a few newcomers. Five o'clock sunset watching as usual (we won't be able to see the sun set over the water here until March - so no green blip watching yet) and lots of catching up with what everyone did over the past 9 months.

I can always tell that we're staying for a while when I see Steve rolling up the end of the line on the dock!

Of course, we were out to breakfast already this morning on our bikes.

What a great place to spend the next 3 months :-)