pre New Year's anchoring out--daytime

And then there were four miscreants aboard the HemiD.

Our friends from Kansas City joined us for a few days over the New Year's holiday.  After giving them the whirlwind tour of Key West, we planned for our next couple days to be out on the water.

It was recommended to us that we go out to Boca Grande Key, around 12 miles west of Key West.  Winds were light, but it still made for a lovely sail out there, no cruise ships, shrimping boats or barges to dodge.

We arrived and got up as close to the island as we could, which was still aways out, but I figgered we better drop anchor in at least 7 feet of water.  

Of course, just to mess with our friend Michael's engineering mind, HemiD rapidly did her 90 degree angle to the anchor rode trick that she's so fond of doing.  We figgered it would happen because the tidal currents from the 'gulf' side to the 'ocean' side of all of these keys are quite active.  It was obvious soon that we were nice and set in the great sandy bottom so we loaded up in Tiny Dancer to explore the island.

Thus, Tim's torture of our friend Kimberly with the Torqeedo (aka Prius motor).  There's a lovely display on the motor that tells you how much charge you have, range, speed, etc.  It's run by a built in GPS and pretty accurate, but that doesn't stop my husband from shouting out, we only have 30% charge left.  Yes, HemiD did look aways off.  But that's what oars are for.

There were signs stating that to keep off the island because of nature preserve, so we for the most part kept in the water.  Well, Kimberly and I did, the boys sat in the dinghy and drank beer.

The crew on shore leave.

The boys on dinghy duty.

Boca Grande

Later we went explored a bit more via dinghy.  Met some folks that were in the channel on their CSY.  So we asked how they got so close, and they proceeded to tell us it's not so bad, if we get over the 20 foot sandbar without grounding.  If we got to them before nightfall they'd lead us in a bit deeper to anchor overnight.

After a little thought, we decided that we were fine where we were.  No need to tempt the fates of the grounding gods.

And much to Kimberly' happiness--we made it back to HemiD without running out of Torqeedo juice.