AquaFennatic Great Loop Blog: Hanging around in the Florida Keys - Boot Key FL

Feb 8^th – It was a hot, hot, hot and sunny day today. Both Maria and I went for a swim behind the boat … and you know it has to be hot if Maria went swimming ;) Shortly after my swim 4 dolphins showed up behind the boat. I’m glad they weren’t there when I was in the water! I setup the portable air conditioner that I purchased on Craigslist and it’s working great and it’s providing us with relief from the heat … while the generator is running. We met a bunch of Loopers at a Tiki bar for a cold one and we saw an iguana swimming in the channel. A number of the Loopers went on a pub crawl by dingy, however we decided to go with Over Ice by dingy to a little island on the Atlantic Ocean to stand in waist deep water with a cold one while we watched the wild life close by. We saw a stingray swim right by us as well as a very large fish. Afterwards we went by dingy back to the boats to clean up for dinner at a Steak and Lobster house with a number of Loopers to celebrate Alan’s birthday (Chica). The food was Exxxcellent and we were all stuffed when we left. After dinner we travelled by dingy back to the boat to relax after a full day of activities.

Feb 9^th – It was another hot, hot, hot and sunny day. I tested the Hookah diving unit that I bought on Craigslist from St Petes and it works great! Afterwards we went by dingy out to the Atlantic to meet a number of Loopers by the little island that we visited yesterday. We then travelled to Sombrero Beach which is at the mouth of Sister Creek. We socialized with a number of Loopers on the beach and it was time to head back to the boat to BBQ an early dinner. The one issue we have with our Sister Creek anchorage is that the no seeums seem to come out from the mangroves just before sunset and at sunrise thus it’s important not to be outside at these times otherwise you’ll be attacked by the no seeums. The only protection I’ve found that works is Off Bug spray … we have a Thermacell unit and I’m not convinced that it keeps them away.

Feb 10^th – It was a hot sunny and extremely windy day. We were hit by large gusts of wind last night and the forecast shows that the winds will continue throughout the day. The good news is that the noseeums are nowhere to be seen … yeah! We went to town by dingy and walked to West Marine to buy a US / Bahamas chart chip for our Garmin handheld as well as a Quarantine flag for the Bahamas. We then walked to the other side of town to do some shopping at Publix. Before we returned to the boat we filled two 5 gallon jugs with water and once we were back at the boat we siphoned the water from the jugs into our water tank. It was easy to do thus we don’t need to conserve water as much as we have been. We do have a watermaker onboard, however the water in Sister Creek doesn’t look clean enough to use as a source for drinking water. We scared off a fish eating bird that was sitting on our anchor chain since we were afraid it would leave behind uneaten fish parts on our boat.