JACKIE B III Going Loopy

We finally arrived in Key West and will be here for a month.  We are expecting quite a few visitors while we are here. The entrance to the harbor was straight and deep Thanks to the Navy carving out the coral for building the runway. These Tarpon were in our slip to greet us.  They are around 4-5 feet long and continued as regular visitors. We headed over to the beach side bar to check it out. And enjoyed our first spectacular sunset. We walked back to the boat and the sky remained beautiful.  Looks as if our daily decision will be sunset from the beach or the boat? We rode our bicycles into Key West on our first full day here. We went to Divers Direct to learn about the Brownie Air system for diving then we went to lunch at the Wharf.  This is where we saw our first Manatee since being in Florida. The Tarpon were also numerous and quite active feeding on the fishermen’s cleaning remains. We were thrilled and honored to greet our friends Jerry and Denice on Nevadatude at the dock where

This is a long awaited day.  We are crossing the straights of florida to get to the Florida Keys. We needed a weather window with calm seas. And we got them.  We also got fog! It was a bit scary. I sat out on the bow with headphones. As the fog lifted we began to see a “fog-bow” As the sun came up it was shining through the fog water droplets to form a bow similar to a rain bow. This was some of the calmest waters we have been on on the entire loop and we’re in wide open water. Even our cell phones didn’t work out here. This was the view from our slip at Marlin Bay in Marathon. We saw our first iguanas. The birds were quite at home in the pool area. A highlight of theirs stop was meeting up with our friends from our first year on the loop; Dan and Deb from “Razor’s Edge.” They are Gold Loopers now and came back down to Florida. It was so much fun to see them! They even showed us the ropes for playing daily pickle ball at the community courts there. Mike was able to kite board from an i