Little Shark River to Boot Key Harbor

The next stop and the last on the Florida mainland was Little Shark River. We left Capri Pass at 0700 and motorsailed 67 miles along the coast off the Everglades. We expected bugs at Little Shark but we thought they would be mosquitoes. What we found there can only be described as stealth jaws with wings, otherwise known as "no-see-ums". The next morning we raised anchor and I told Annette to just keep on going as they were even biting my eyelids.

The eight hour trip across the Gulf to Vaca Key and Marathon was uneventful, with most of the time spent dodging the small buoys marking the crab pots that are everywhere in this area. Here we are approaching the end of our trip on the Gulf of Mexico and the beginning of the segment on the Atlantic Ocean. That's Seven Mile Bridge in the picture. On the other side is the Atlantic. Marathon and Boot Key Harbor are to port. We anchored at the far end of the harbor. There we replaced our batteries as they were no longer capable of sustaining a charge for longer than one day. On December 18th, I was alone on the boat when the anchor started to drag in the increasing wind. I started the engine after getting a second anchor out and motored as far forward as I could and threw the second anchor over. After setting it, I went to retrieve the original one. As I pulled it up, it got very heavy. The owner of the boat behind me came up with his dinghy to help. He kept insisting that the weight was just a ball of mud. I knew it was steel. It turned out to be one of the four anchors he had out! I could raise the two anchors (mine a Bruce and his a CQR) just far enough for him to work on getting them apart on his hard dinghy. He dropped his where it was and took mine out as far as I had rode. I reset that anchor and then motored against it to retrieve the other anchor which was not holding and needed to be reset at a better angle to the first one. This time I got in the dinghy and took the second anchor out. After great effort, I finally got into a position that seemed to work. We stayed put through the night and left the next morning for Key Largo.