Sunday February 9: Another Test Overnighter

Finally - another nice weather day and a chance to check out how all of the boat systems were working. Plus a chance to play of course!

Off we went Thursday morning as we first traveled west from Banana Bay, under the 7 mile bridge and then back east to Curry Hammock State Park.

We were headed there to meet up with couple of other boats from the marina (they went over Wednesday) plus Werner and Kathy on It's About Time.

Total distance to the park? Just over 23 miles so a nice 3 hour cruise even though the waves were broadside a good part of the way once we were under the bridge and traveling east.

Sure enough - we arrived and Jenna Star and I Think I Can were there!



We tied up next to Kathy and Werner. A third boat from Banana Bay tied next to us and we were good to go!



It didn't take long to lower dinghys and kayaks. Looked like some serious play time going on!

It was a great place to kayak as there was a path through the managroves so you could just go in a circle. The part between the blue lines in the picture below was an area that was totally covered with just a sometimes quite narrow passageway to go through.



Really a fun ride with lots of fish easily seen in the 2 foot deep water.








It was a quiet night with a great sunrise (again - not that I saw it but Steve was up :-)  )

The entrance to this park is quite shallow - even for us with our 3'8" draft so we needed to wait until the tide was at least half way up. That would give us plenty of depth to make our escape!

Meantime, we explored one of the canals near the park. George and Nancy said they had seen quite a few iguanas which we didn't want to miss so off we went with Kathy and Werner. George and Nancy followed us in with their dinghy.

We were NOT disappointed!! These things were HUGE - sitting in the mangrove trees along the canal sunning themselves. I think the biggest we've ever seen down here for sure. Definitely fun to look at.




It was a nice ride back to Banana Bay although once again broadside waves. We made a detour through Boot Key Harbor to check out all of the boats on the mooring balls (all 250 mooring balls are taken and there is a waiting list of folks wanting to take one). Back under the bridge and we were good to go.

All systems working great! Perhaps one of these days we'll actually have everything done we want to do before heading to the Bahamas at the end of March :-)