Thursday January 1, 2014: Banana Bay :-)

 We pulled into Banana Bay Marina about 2:30 today - our home for the next 3 months. It was definitely nice to be in ....

Backtracking to yesterday: we didn't leave Everglades City until 10 due to the ultralow tides and the shallow entrance (this seems to be a constant theme the last few days). No problem though as we made it out and were on our way. The Little Shark River (our destination) was another 35 miles so between 4 and 5 hours. Should arrive about 3:30 or so.

The one hour route back out to the Gulf is a nice one with mangroves surrounding the waterways. You can see how much the water was down - even though we waited until the tide was a least starting back up - hate to get stuck with the tide going down as you have to just wait until it comes back up.

Such a gorgeous area. And before too long we were out on the Gulf and making our way in the 1 foot waves to Little Shark River. Right. 1 foot waves? Right. 10 knot winds? Right.

First off, the dinghy tried to escape! Apparently the "1 foot waves" (read: more like 2 foot with a few larger thrown in just for fun) were able to lift the dinghy a bit and eventually one of the lines came loose. Steve yelled to stop the boat - I thought he had a fish :-)

So we stop and between the bouncing waves managed to get the dinghy once again secured onto the swim platform.

Next, Steve is doing his routine checking of the engine and comes out and yelled, once again, to stop the boat - apparently there is water flowing OUT of the overflow jug for the engine coolant. How is that happening??? The engine wasn't overheating though so we weren't sure what was going on.

By slowing down, we found the speed at which we could run and have no water running out. Ok. Seems to be working. But of course then I'm watching the temperature gauge almost constantly. And Steve is checking the water in the overflow bottle almost as often. And we're in the middle of nowhere? Of course......

Through all of this Steve has two fishing rods out!! I mean we're running 35 miles in the Gulf - why not try for a fish?!

It worked. He ended up with a nice Spanish Mackerel. Of course it was too rough for me to leave the helm so he brought it up so I could take a picture.

In the end, we decided the engine heat exchanger must have developed a hole which allowed salt water into the engine cooling system. Normally I would have thought the water would just all drain out - which would have been a bad thing so too much water was ok with me!

I was never so happy to be in an anchorage in a long time! We arrived just a bit after 5 and no sooner were anchored than the sun went down.

This is a very well protected river and the wind actually died shortly after dark so all was well.

There were a couple of other boats there with us - one of which was in the mud by the time the tide went down 5 feet. Mmmm ... the mud bank was crazy far out from shore. No pictures though as I just wanted to get moving this morning.

In the end, today's run of 7 hours was uneventful with my masterful dodging of thousands of crabpots (well, ok, tens of hundred at least).

At our reduced speed we still made fairly good time and the wind was reasonable today. Sun was shining much of the day - yesterday is already a forgotten memory :-)

I can tell we're here to stay a while - Steve has put our dock lines in a nice little circle pile :-)

Time for the Rose Bowl game!!