Marathon to Bahai Honda Kay

Day 22: Monday, March 14, 2016

We again had a wonderful night’s sleep on calm seas.  Our breakfast fare was bacon, eggs and toast.  We messed around in the boat until about 10:00 when we climbed in the Dink and headed back to Vaca Key.

This is the last day on our rental of a dinghy space at the marina so we went back to take one last shower before heading out.  As usual, showers always brighten the day.  From the marina, we headed back to the Keys Fisheries Market for an early lunch.  Janine had a grouper sandwich and I had to try a hogfish sandwich.  Janine reported that hers was excellent and I submit the same.  On the way out, we bought two spiny lobsters to be prepared on the boat this evening. 

Trawler at the Flagler and 7 Mile Bridge

The Dink carried us back to Second Wind which was swinging around slowly in a light breeze.  Our destination is Bahia Honda Key which is about 10 miles west of our current mooring.  The gentle breeze from the south west will make a nice ride.

I raised the main sail while we were still anchored and started the motor.  My goal was to sail away from the anchorage. I had the idling motor available as a backup if thing were to go wrong.  Things went well and I set the jib as we sailed west.

Just west of Vaca Key runs the 7 mile bridge that parallels the historic rail bridge of the same name that was built by Henry Morrison Flagler.  His visionary railroad was built in the early 20^th century and completed to Key West in 1912.  It remained in operation until it was heavily damaged by a hurricane in 1935. 

The route we followed carried us along the entire length of the bridge.  At one point at about 1/3 way out a span of the bridge had been removed to allow for passage for tall boats.  The highway bridge that parallels it has, at that point, an elevated section that opens one of only two navigable channels for sailboats from the Florida Bay to the Atlantic in the Keys.

Our potential Spiny Lobster Dinner

We continued to sail in diminishing winds until about 3:30 when it became obvious that we were not going to make it to the Bahia Honda State Park Marina by their 5:00 closing time.  We fired up the engine and headed out.  We reached what we thought was the entrance to the Park’s harbor at about 4:30 only to find that what we assumed was their passageway was just a passage into a little manmade private harbor.  Immediately in front of us as we headed on west was the Highway 1 bridge.  No marina.  We turned around and slowly headed back the way we came, looking for the entrance which was reported in the literature to be a bit tricky to spot.  As we passed an anchored trawler, I shut down the motor and inquired about the marina’s location and he told me that you couldn’t get there from here.  It is, in fact, located on the other side of the highway bridge which has a vertical clearance of 20 feet.  So we motored on close to shore and dropped anchor in a nice shallow cove near the west end of Bahia Honda Key. 

We had a weak cell service that was enough to provide our phone hot spot to give us Wi-Fi service so we were able to Google how to clean and cook a spiny lobster.  We found a couple of utube videos that explained the process well.  We followed their techniques closely and were rewarded with a wonderful pile of tasty lobster that we fried in butter.  They obviously don’t steam or cook the tail in one piece rather they fillet the meat off a tough piece of skin that is located on the back of the tail piece and then chop the remaining fillets into bite size pieces. The result is tasty tender lobster.  We paired it with Fettuccini Alfredo for a wonderful evening meal.

After a short nap, we decided to go for a swim.  The water temperature was pleasantly cool but our anchorage was a bit deep and there was a weak tidal current that required us to remain close to the boat.  It was quite refreshing.

Back in the boat, as we were getting to bed down for the night, we received a call from the young lady who watches our dog and takes care of our house while we are gone.  When she arrived at the house, she found our great friend, golden retriever, Louie, down on the garage floor and unresponsive.  She is a

trained vet tech and she offered to take him to a veterinarian emergency care facility.  The outcome from that visit is that he had internal bleeding from what they assumed was a cancerous spleen and that his chances of survival, even with surgical intervention, were poor.  So, we had to make the impossible decision to put him to sleep.  Tears come to my eyes as I type this.  As you can imagine, sleep did not come easily for either of us.  It was a long night.