Thursday Jan. 15, 2015 Rose Marina, Marco Island to Everglades City Anchorage

 

We got up at 0730 planning an early departure from the marina but sometimes things don’t work like we planned. The Key West Express parks right across the dock from us and today they don’t depart until 0830. Not wanting to get in his way as we went to the fuel dock we waited for him to depart. We then pulled over to the fuel dock for fuel and a pump out of the holding tank. I had not purchased fuel since back in Carrabelle, FL at Thanksgiving and although I still had 300 gallons or so of fuel the price here is $2.65 a gallon and I can’t believe it will be any cheaper in the Keys, which is where we are headed. We topped off the tanks with 160 gallons and were on our way. We had talked to our friends Chuck and Arlene who own a boat down here on Marco about exiting the Marco River. You save a lot of time because you don’t have to go so far out into the Gulf to get around the Cape Romano shoals. They said if we left at high tide we should not have any problems. They were right about the water depth but even with directions on the chart, we had to stop a couple of times and think about which markers we should be following. Their wisdom and info paid off and we made it through the Marco River and into the Gulf without mishap. You have to get used to skinny (shallow) water down along the west coast of Florida, 12 feet of water is living large. We had times where the depth finder was down to 1.9 feet under the keel, that’s about 6.5 feet of water total.

We pulled into Indian Key anchorage by Everglades City, Fl. We are up a river about 4.5 miles from downtown, very rustic and quiet. We hope the mosquitoes wouldn’t be too bad tonight.

These are all white pelicans by Indian Key near Everglades City

Marker 8.5 restaurant in Goodland where we lunched with Chuck and Arlene