Every night since we have been in Marathon we have been blessed with a
beautiful sunset. Often we jump in the dinghies and head just outside
the marina to the open water, drop the little dinghy anchor and watch
the sky turn every shade of orange, pink, or purple imaginable! Thank
you God for sunsets! On this particular night we were with Marc and
Michele and Greg and Donna. We each had an adult beverage and Marc had
bought a conch shell and learned to blow it sounding the sunset! I was
impressed and decided I needed to have one for the anchor outs at the
rollers back home. I will have to have a lesson before we get home.
We visited the Dolphin research center where they conduct research on dolphins and
sea lions. I could watch those dolphins all day long! They are so
entertaining and smart! So much was going on when we were there. They
were conducting dolphin encounters where folks would get in and swim
with them, they were doing more training work with other dolphins and of
course the nurse in me was impressed with this trainer obtaining a
fecal sample from Louie, the youngest dolphin at the center!
As we left the dolphin center we saw that the water out on the reef appeared
flat so we quickly put on our swimming suits, untied the 20BUCK$ and
headed back out for another afternoon of snorkeling on Sombrero reef!
Marc’s Ark showed up so we snorkeled over to say hi and meet Nate and
Emily, their two kids who are down visiting for a week! Didn’t bring my
camera when we were swimming over to their boat because it was quite a
long swim. What was I thinking???? First a 5’ nurse shark swam below
me and then on the way back to our boat a huge sting ray was laying in
the sand! Note to self.....don’t leave your camera on the boat!
In preparation for our leaving
Marathon next week we attended a session on Florida to Norfolk, VA and
then one of our Burdine neighbors gave us their favorite anchorages for
the North Channel in Canada. We are excited to get going again but have
loved our time in Marathon!
Last night we attended the third annual
Sunset Celebration for all loopers hanging out in Marathon. There were
120 of us! I can’t believe how many folks are doing or have done this
wonderful trip! The celebration was held at Banana Bay resort
pavilion! Such a fun time! We saw folks we had met elsewhere along the
loop and some people we hadn’t met came up to us and said, “we are
following your blog!” It is really quite a community!
Our plan is to leave Marathon on March
4th and begin our journey north! We will spend some time over the next
week studying charts again so we are sure we know where we are going.
Marcs Ark will be heading out with us and we are thrilled to travel with
them again for however long it lasts! Such good friends! I will close
with one more sunset picture! Haven’t seen the green flash yet but
each one is so beautiful!!!
Getting Keys disease in Marathon! Pat
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