MONDAY JANUARY 18TH

We left the Sunset Marina and Key West at Sunrise. It was also low tide and pretty hairy till we got to the Atlantic. We have an alarm that sounds when we get close to hitting the bottom and it was going off. A lot! The day was glorious and we traveled on the Atlantic side of the Keys on our way to Marathon Key. The ocean had around a 2 foot swell on it and it made for a smooth ride. Today we reached our southern most point on making the loop.

It was easy to spot the millions of crab traps and avoid them. Well, maybe there weren’t quite a million, but it seemed like it. We did see thousands of dead sea creatures. And that’s not an exaggeration. Fish of every shape and size, eels and even a sea turtle. We turned the boat around and went back to take a photo of the turtle. As we got close, it appeared to be dead. We later learned that is was most likely cold stunned. If only we had known, we could have contacted someone. There is a turtle hospital on Marathon and they treated hundreds of cold stunned turtles. Hopefully someone else saw it and called the right people.

We arrived at the Sombrero Dockside Marina and Lounge by mid afternoon. There are quite a few Gold Burgee Loopers here. (those that have completed the Loop). When they saw our burgee, they immediately came to welcome us.