Safe and Sound on a mooring

Safe and Sound on a mooring

Friday 5th – Sunday 7th March 2021

We got lucky and on Friday afternoon a mooring opened up for us. There are 225 moorings here in Boot Key harbor of which only 15 are designated for boats larger than 45 feet. We were able to persuade the harbor staff that at 45’ 10” Cotinga was not 46 feet long but 45 feet with 10 inches of attitude. With a strong cold front and high winds predicted there weren’t many boats moving on. In fact just one boat left on Friday and we were fortunate to be at the top of the waiting list. We didn’t get in to the office to square away the paperwork until Saturday morning and we were surprised to find out that it is the same price to stay on a mooring as it is to pay for dinghy dock and access to the other facilities such as showers and pump-out. Essentially if you stay in the harbor and use the marina it’s the same price (~ $90 for a week) whether you are moored or anchored … the mooring is free! (Obviously if you do anchor you don’t have to pay for access to the marina facilities but there is real value in the facilities they offer)

We now have our bikes on shore and leave them locked up on the bike racks and it’s really easy to take the dinghy into the dock and go for a walk or a bike ride. On Saturday we biked out to Crane Point Hammock, which we have visited previously. We had hoped to see Black-whiskered vireos, which nest there, but we didn’t see much of anything. Nonetheless it was pleasant to walk around. Later in the afternoon we took the dinghy down to a pub / restaurant called “Castaways” off the west side of the harbor. You can tie up to their dinghy dock and get a table outside. We specifically reserved a table as far away from other people as possible! We went early so it was pretty quiet, but Happy Hour got us half price beer and $7 sushi plates! Gloria, not one for raw fish, settled for grilled mahi-mahi over pasts alfredo, which was also delicious. 

The cold front came through and we had some heavy rain around midnight last night. Today it’s quite breezy but other than that it’s beautiful. To be honest we didn’t do too much today except a quick walk up the supermarket. We plan to cook Thai “Drunken Noodles with chicken and shrimp” tonight. We picked a bunch of basil from the marina herb gardens – you can’t beat that for fresh.

Basically we are going to be hanging out here, relaxing and getting a few boat jobs done until we get a decent weather window to move back up the coast of Florida. We are likely to be covering much of the same ground as on the way south, which brings me on to this question – what would you like to hear about in the blog or what types of photos do you want to see? There is no doubt in my mind that the biggest benefit of the blog is to us, as a diary of what we have been doing that we can go back to in the future. However, we don’t want to bore you so what should we write about?

Mike

24 42.327 N, 81 05.701 W

Water Lily 1 at Crane Point Hammock

Water Lily 1 at Crane Point Hammock

"Shaving Brush Tree" - I can't believe that's the trees real name but it's what the sign said and the ~3" blossoms were spectacular