We left Key West on Monday April 1st. Again the wind was a bit against us but we needed to take advantage of a short weather window to get East. After a long day of pushing as close to the wind as we could we arrived in Boot Key harbor in Marathon in the afternoon and picked up a mooring ball. This was not a fun trip but sometimes you have to fight the wind a bit to get anywhere.
I was feeling a bit off when we got in, but wrote it off to just being tired so we turned in early. That night I woke up with a fever and felt so bad I thought I might have to go to the hospital. Teresa gave me some Tylenol which helped bring down the fever. We had some Tamiflu aboard and I took some of that the next morning. This seemed to help and I think in the long run shortened the time I was sick.
After about 24 hours I was beginning to feel better and the fever broke, but it took a couple of days to start to get back to normal. I was glad we were at the mooring and were safe for any bad weather to come along. We decided to stay here a bit longer both for me to fully recover and also to get to know this area a bit better.
We were never really impressed with Marathon as a whole. The anchorage was filled with semi derelict boats with some sketchy people living aboard boats that would never go anywhere again. The longer we stayed the more we began to think maybe this opinion was not 100% correct.
After a couple days here we learned that there was a VHF radio net every morning where the boaters would exchange information on get togethers and local happenings along with sharing help for follow boaters. We came to learn there was a real community of boaters here. We decided to stay a few more days to get to know some of the folks here.
The more we listened to the radio the more we learned that many of these boaters were stand up folks that helped each other out when needed. We listened to some who went out of their way to help prevent boats dragging anchor from causing harm to other boats even though they did not know any of the boats owners. It would seem our first impressions were a bit off.
The town harbor masters were very friendly and helpful with anything you may need. There was a large dinghy dock along with bath/shower rooms and laundry. They even had loaner bikes for the cruisers to use for free. There was an area where liveaboards and cruisers could meet, drink and play games. All in all this was a very friendly place for cruisers and local liveaboards.
We ended up staying a bit longer than planned, once again waiting for a good weather window to continue East and then back North.
