Happy Cinco de Mayo and Derby Day! Lots of partying going on today! It was such a peaceful night and beautiful sunny morning. The Key West ferry headed out at 8:30 filled with passengers for a rousing good time in Key West. Anyone up for a trip to Key West for Fantasy Fest in October 2012?
We took Auggie to shore this morning and got a closer look at a demo boat for law enforcement complete with bullet-proof pads, 5-50 caliber machine gun mounts, powered by 3-300 Yamaha engines.
It was painted all in black for the “stealth effect”. Very cool boat!
We untied sthe pennant from the mooring ball at 9:30 and slowly motored out Matanzas Pass to San Carlos Bay. We passed a paddle boarder with his dog and a cooler on board headed for the beach.
Today they are having a 7 mile paddle board race along the beach which is probably where he was headed–to watch. The water in San Carlos Bay was smoother than when we came over on Wednesday as we headed north on the ICW. We passed many boats traveling to Ft. Myers Beach. After all, it’s the weekend! We’ll be glued to the TV set at 4:00 to watch the 138th running of the Kentucky Derby! Horses are my thing–in any shape or form. One of these days I’ll get to the Kentucky Derby in person and be able to check it off my Bucket List. We traveled along with lots to look at on this particular Saturday—boats of all shapes and sizes including the police boat we saw in Ft. Myers Beach.
A go-fast boat came screaming by. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
I spotted a huge sea turtle that surfaced near the boat, but then he took a quick dive before I could get a picture. Awesome!! Our destination today is back to Cayo Costa State Park where we can view the Super Moon at it closest distance to the Earth tonight. We wanted to be somewhere with very little ambient light and this will be perfect! We picked up a couple of dolphins around Cabbage Key—a mom and her baby. I was able to snap a few pictures as they swam and jumped alongside of us. It’s always an awesome sight!
Cabbage Key was busy with boats stopping for lunch or to check out that famous bar/restaurant covered in $1 bills stapled to the walls.
It was a very warm day, but Auggie enjoyed snoozing in the shade on the seat next to Bob.
We had lunch on the way and arrived at our anchorage at 1:00 to drop the anchor. As we entered the channel to Cayo Costa we remembered that they were having “Heritage Days” at the park to celebrate their history. Along the deep entrance channel, boats were anchored in the lagoon along the long spit of sand enjoying the day.
We got settled in and watched the ferries bringing visitors to the island for the celebration. Inside the anchorage, there were only 11 boats compared to the 18 we saw the last time we were here. We’ll see how many boats end up coming in by the end of the day. Bob got this idea of using his rod holder attached to his chair for holding his beach umbrella. He enjoyed kicking back in the shade with a beer, watching the boat traffic this afternoon.
I did a little needed cleaning on the outside canvas. Then I put on my suit and dangled my feet in the water. How refreshing! We cranked up the tunes and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon. At 4:00 we watched the festivities leading up to the running of the Kentucky Derby. What a race it was! We grilled chicken for dinner and took a ride to shore for our evening walk with Auggie. As the sun set, we sat out back playing 500 Rummy and waited for the moon to rise. The moon looked huge as it started to rise in the sky. Beautiful!
We sat out back until the mosquitoes chased us inside and continued our game there. We’ll try and get up to check out the moon at 11:35 when it should be at its closest point to Earth and look the largest.
