A Day in Marathon

Day 20: Saturday, March 12, 2016

Today was a day of getting things put back in order and resupplying our trusty craft.  We awoke at our usual time and enjoyed a pancake and bacon breakfast. 

I took the Dink for an exploration trip, looking for a place where we could land on the hard shore and make a trip into town.  I did indeed locate such a place, so plans were made to head into town after lunch.  I also traveled back to the Keys Fisheries Market and Marina to take some pictures.  It looks quite different in daylight.  On the way back, I stopped by Doug’s boat and we had a long

Li'l Penguin moored at the abandoned marina

conversation about a lot of important stuff.  He has made an appointment to pull into a berth at a boat yard which had recently done some work on his boat, so I took him over to check on the availability of his slip. 

On the way over there, we went around the dock area of this abandoned resort/marina.  It is amazing how much they had gotten accomplished before they went belly up.  Evidently, the new owners are doing a small amount of

Doug on Li'l Penguin

work, possibly trying to keep it from deteriorating further.  The boat yard had a few slips but was mainly a working repair yard.

After lunch Janine and I took the Dink over to shore and walked about ½ mile across US highway 1 which was jam packed with backed up traffic. There is an annual seafood festival with throngs of people and traffic.  On the other side of the highway which we crossed at significant risk to our life and limb, we went to the Marathon City Marina and signed up for a Dinghy Dock parking permit.  We will not be using the dinghy dock, however with that permit, we get full use of the wonderful services of the marina, including an impressive book exchange.  From there, we headed for a

Keys Fisheries Market absent the throngs of people

Publix to get some groceries.  We had walked about a ½ mile when I realized that I had left my phone on the counter at the marina.  So, back we went.  Of course the desk clerk had rescued and saved it for me.

Back we went toward Publix.  Along the way we passed the city park where the thousands of revelers were both coming and going.  The Publix is about 1 1/4 miles from the marina and the temp was in the low 80’s.  On the way, we passed a Home Depot (I think the first one ever

A couple of beauties - Second Wind  (left)

built.)  We went in looking for fuses to replace the one that I had hot-wired to get across the strait from Cape Sable.  We spent quite a bit of time walking up and down isles until a lady offered to help and took us to their extremely limited supply of the little plastic fuses.  However, they did have the one that I needed but I had to buy a whole kit of them for $21.00 to get the one I needed.

Back on the trek to Publix, we passed an ice cream shop and needed to reenergize our system so we went in.  It was air conditioned and the ice cream was really good. It was a good call!

Once we arrived at Publix, we were a bit bushed but dove into the shopping thing

Island of cormorants

with gusto.  We needed to replenish some of our perishables and things like paper towels and pop.  I made the mistake of buying a 12 pack of Coke for Janine and later got to pay the price of carrying that along with the other things back to the dinghy.  Don’t get me wrong, Janine carried her share of the load, but we both agreed that the road back was significantly longer than the one getting there.

We made it and back at the boat, we went about putting things away and repairing the motor.  Another problem that we have been having

Marathon City Marina

is the short amount of time that our batteries hold a charge.  I have installed a solar panel on the Bimini which in the past has kept the batteries topped up but recently it hasn’t been working very well.  After some checking, I discovered a wire had come loose at the plug that attached the panel to the boat’s wiring system.  I repaired the loose wire and the electrons began flowing back into the battery. 

Parking problems at the dinghy dock

We were both tired so a cold beer along with leftover duck and ½ lobster Reuben made for an easy tasty evening meal.  After dinner, we read for a while being entertained by the loud music from the Seafood Festival.  The bands in the late evening were actually quite good playing heavy metal music from the 60s and 70’s.  The night air was pleasant and we spent the waning hours before bed relaxing on the back deck enjoying the sounds.