Day 83 - 27 February

Damage in the vicinity of Windreka from the squall that went through yesterday included a flooded dinghy and outboard motor belonging to the trawler in the slip next to us. Joe checked Windreka's dock lines a couple of times and this morning tightened them and added a fenderboard between Windreka and the piling on her starboard side. The deck was cleaner than it had been before the rain and everything was drying nicely in the wind.

Due to the weather...windy and rainy...we're touring the Middle and Lower Keys. We rented a car from Avis and picked it up at the airport. We would have preferred Enterprise since they will deliver the car on pickup and deliver you back to your origin on dropoff. However, the only cars they had available were more expensive than Avis. So, we called for a yellow cab that picked us up at the Marina, As a bonus, the driver gave us some advice on places to get lunch and dinner and places to visit.

We ate lunch at the Wreck in Marathon where our cab driver said they had the best key lime pie in the Keys...it was pretty good! We stopped at a visitors' center in Islamorada and picked up a few brochures and a couple of books. Once again, we were dismayed by the lack of knowledge of many of the things we wanted to see. It wasn't the visitors' center fault since there is no single source of visitors' information we have come to expect when we travel for relaxation in other areas.

After the visitors center, we drove north toward Tavernier to visit the "historic" old town and were a bit disappointed in what we saw. All we found was a few run-down buildings and a few new ones, so we moved along quickly. We turned around and drove south again to the History of Diving Museum at mile marker 83. The Museum is a well-organized private collection of diving apparatus and its history. We spent about an hour going through the museum. Preview it at: http://www.divingmuseum.org/.

Down the road in Islamogorda, we passed an eclectic collection of crafts and artwork. We stopped and spent about a half hour looking over the collection of things for sale before moving on.

Our next stop was to feed the Tarpon at Robbie's http://www.robbies.com/. At first we thought the Tarpon were penned up in tight enclosure to be harassed by Florida tourists trying to get close and personal. However, the Tarpon seem to gather around the dock pilings and hang out there during the day. Toward evening, the Tarpon all head out toward the channel to hunt for their dinner. Apparently, during the day, the Tarpon are fed by the tourists. When the tourists go home for the evening, the fish all head out to dine in the ocean. The next day the fish return to start the cycle again.

After our visit to Robbie's, we stopped at Publix grocery store to top off our food reserves. Afterwards, we drove back to marina to settle in, have dinner, and look at how the weather will impact our plans in the morning. High on our accended is to visit the Turtle Hospital here in Marathon before going anywhere else.

If the weather doesn't break by Friday, we'll probably drive to Key West early on Friday and spend the night so we can drop Phil off to catch his bus north to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. If the weather breaks, we can drive Windreka down to Key West on Friday where we can drop Phil off to catch his bus on Saturday.

As I'm closing the log, we've got 30-35 knots of wind from the north and the skies are clearing. The temperature is 66 degrees.