It has been very warm and calm in the Keys for the last several days so we have taken advantage and used the boat quite a bit. They are calling for small craft warnings starting on Wednesday so Randy plans to pull the boat tomorrow to wash and clean the bottom. I hope we have a return of the great weather by the weekend since friends are visiting for a week.
On Saturday, we met Jonathan, Marlene and Kathleen to show them how to have a good time on LIttle Palm Island. A lot of our friends went to Marvin Key on Saturday, so we were surprised that so many others from VO came out to Little Palm. Sue even shared several of her sea biscuits with us. I found out she did not find them on Little Palm but must have found them somewhere else. She shared the Sea Biscuits but so far has not shared the secret of where she found them. Before heading in we also showed Jonathan how to get to Picnic Island. The plan was to also show Jonathan how to access the Gulf for his return trip to Key West, but we spent so much time on Little Palm that we had to postpone that portion of the trip.
On Sunday we invited Larry and Karen to accompany us out to Marvin Key. We left VO about 11:00 so that we could miss the low tide here. I was glad we left a little earlier than originally planned, because we had lots of skinny water to get accross. Bruce told us he had run aground the day before coming back from Marvin. Its tricky getting there because the tides are so different on the Atantic and Gulf, even though they aren’t that far apart. Low tide at VO means high tide at Marvin.
When Randy was anchoring the boat he found a live sand dollar and a sea cucumber. I don’t think I had ever seen a live sand dollar. He placed the sand dollar back in a different place so that it would not get hurt by any of the boat anchors. Instead of coming back to VO the same way, we took the Gulf back through Johnson Channel. It is a little longer this way but less stressful getting back once you clear the Key–no worries about running aground! We finished off the afternoon with a dip in the pool.
We thought Monday would be another gorgeous day on the water so planned to find the reef at Newfound Harbor Key Sanctuary Preservation Area. The reef is a half-mile square inshore patch reef just off Little Palm Island and partially within the Coupon Bight Aquatic Preserve. It is supposed to be a good snorkel location so Randy was hoping to scope the area out in case our friends had good weather for snorkeling. Unfortunately the South West winds and rough seas had the water very choppy so instead we just stopped off for a quick trip to Little Palm Island. At slack-low tide a small ray and bonnethead shark swam by in front of us. While exploring Randy found a large hermit crab and a piece of common brain coral!
