Cruises of the "Bucket List": Marco Island to Marathon

Yep, all the way from Marco Island to Marathon in one day. Over a hundred miles planned today!!

In our planning, there were a couple of ways that people recommended to get from Ft Myers to Marathon. The first suggestion was to go from Ft Myers to Everglades City for the night, then from Everglades City to an anchorage in Little Shark River for a second night, and then on to Marathon the next day. Another suggestion was to go from Marco Island and spend the night on the hook at Little Shark River and then on to Marathon.

Either one was do-able but each presented some problems. Everglades city is about 7 miles inland through some of the "Ten Thousand Islands". To get there, you needed to go out to deeper water 3 miles or more to clear the Cape Romano Shoals that are south of Marco Island, then back to the east. That is a lot of distance to cover to not go very far south. To get to Little Shark River, you are still going more East than South. More wasted miles in my opinion. When you get to the river, it is in the Everglades with numerous bugs, alligators and other unsavory creatures. Plus, the tides in the river are very fast, and they will reverse during the middle of the night. Something I didn't really look forward to while at anchor.

Also, and probably the most determining factor was the weather. I use a web sight called "passage weather" and it showed a front coming in a couple of days with wind and 3-4 ft waves. That only left us a good 24 hours to get there unless we wanted to wait out the storm and go who knows when later. We sure weren't going to tackle 3-4 ft waves again by choice. We had enough of that on our overnight crossing to Tarpon Springs.

When I looked at the charts, Marathon was SSE of Marco Island, just a little over 100 miles. All we needed to do was angle out a few miles to clear the Cape Romano Shoals,and head straight to a marker just north of Marathon that would guide us through the shallow water there. We only needed to average 10 mph to make it in daylight with plenty of time to spare. So this is the route that we preferred and the one that we took. If we had wanted to go direct to Key West, it was almost exactly the same mileage!

We got up and left the marina right at sunrise or a little before and left the dock around 7:00. I had the course plotted on the GPS, and we used the Radar as well, so it was an easy departure to get out to deeper water. I deviated from the course a little by staying closer to the Romano Shoals that I had plotted. I just watched the depth finder and the chart and when I started feeling uncomfortable I turned more out to deeper water. I wanted to stay in around 10 ft or so which would give us 6 feet under the keel.

The weather could not have been more beautiful! There were almost NO waves, and the ones we had were directly on the bow. Perfect conditions for such a crossing. I kept waiting for the weather to change but it remained calm the whole way.

Cindy's Observations: Sunrise is not my normal starting time, but they do make a lovely way to start your day when they are as beautiful as this. We had our chart marked and enjoyed a little mid morning snack.

Our route, and a snack

Perfect!!!

We ran at about 1275 RPM instead of the 1050 RPM that I (and the boat) like, and as such we burned more fuel than we would have going slower. The boat ran smoothly at that speed though and we still averaged over 1 MPG at around 10.2 MPH. Every time I checked the GPS, our arrival time moved up a few minutes. That felt good!

Cindy's Observations: Every time Larry said our ETA was earlier I silently rejoiced. It was a very good thought to get docked before the sun would set.

Almost the whole route was lined with Crab and Lobster Pots. Even 50 miles out there were thousands of the pots and the boats that were tending to them. They probably wondered what we were doing out in the middle of their ocean.

Cindy's Observations: As usual we were on lobster trap watch. I'm always in search of color combinations I have not seen before. One man hooks the line to pull up the trap, the other man opens it, empties it, rebates and then back in she goes. A swift process they have mastered.

Crab or Lobster boat.

Crab pots as far as you can see!!!

We arrived at our destination, the Harbor Cay Club, around 5:30 PM It is a private marina that rents open slips out to transients. It was recommended by Gemini Dream who had spent some time there. I also found the name and phone number on the Active Captain websight. I told them on the phone that we at least wanted to stay at least a couple of days to find our way around. As it worked out, they had a terrific monthly rate and we decided to stay here and take day trips to the rest of the Keys from here.

Cindy's Observations: Almost to our destination and the sky turned dark. Oh no, not another traumatic dockage, I feared. But alas, just a quick rinse off and the sun appeared to let us dock in peace. I called ahead for instructions and we were met with helping hands to secure our lines. Shortly after tying up, we took a moment to watch the sunset.