Our Adventures with Seaquel

After leaving Looe Reef we anchored in Newfound Harbor. We were here before and it’s prob the best anchorage between Key West and Marathon.  It’s a protected bay with lots of center console traffic during the day which quiets as soon as it is dark. A good thing about the anchorage is that we can get to land on both Big Pine Key (where we went to the Flea Market, Walgreens and grocery store) and Ramrod Key (where we went to the Green Market). I guess we are market themed! We arrived here on February 24th and it’s March 13th! The big story here is the wind. It’s been blowing like crazy.  I had no idea we would be here so long. We were able to provision at Winn Dixie. That means dinghy to shore, pull our wagon on the 3/4 mile walk to the grocery store, walk back to the dock pulling the wagon and holding the extra bag that wouldn’t fit in the wagon cause Eddie is really struggling with his SI joint pain, load everything onto Zoom, dinghy back to Seaquel, load everything onto Seaqu...

  If you know Eddie and I then you know we love to scuba and snorkel. I’d say that one of my favorite places on earth is to be under the sea. Now you can cue the Little Mermaid song Under the Sea or the Beatles song Octupus’s Garden. Both songs played through my head each time we snorkeled.  Under the sea.  Darling it's better.  Down where it's wetter.  Take it from me. We snorkeled a couple times off Fort Jefferson in the old coal docks. The piling had nice coral and fish but unfortunately the water was very stirred up and visibility was dreadful. Still nice to get in the water.  Snorkeling around the fort. Our next snorkel was a trip to Loggerhead Key. We went with Keith and Deb, both in our own dinghy as neither boat can get on plane with 4 people and gear aboard and it was a 3 mile cruise. It turned out to be a wild ride! I was at the helm and we were in 2’ seas in an 11 foot boat,  traveling at 15 knots. There was a time where I would have been af...

The Dry Tortugas are 70 miles west of Key West, accessible by boat or sea plane. We lifted our anchor at 7am and set out with Deb & Keith on Right Hand. We had great conditions for the first 5 hours cruising north of various keys and the Marquesas. It was great cruising and not too bad even when we were past the keys and in open waters. This was our first attempt at  fishing and at Keith’s suggestion we were trolling with a ballyhoo on the line. Eddie called the bait Skippy as it skips along the surface about 150’ off the stern!  As luck would have it we were about 1 1/2 hours off the Dry Tortugas when a squall came through kicked up the winds and the sea and wouldn’t you know it we also had a fish online!  We dropped to idle, I took the helm while Eddie reeled in our catch. Then I skedaddled downstairs with the net to bring the fish on board! That seemed a little harder than I expected it to be and I caught one of the hooks on the net but was still able to  lift...