We are also experiencing something we have never experienced before as boaters. We must leave Sombrero Dockside Marina tomorrow because someone else has this slip reserved for the month of February. The problem is that the weather here is not very good for departing – the wind had been blowing VERY hard (over 20 knots with gusts to 30 knots) for the last two days and it is not forecast to be much better tomorrow. However that doesn’t matter. We have no choice. We must leave our slip tomorrow. As Great Lakes boaters, this is a very unusual circumstance. Since most Michigan harbors are harbors of refuge, boaters don’t get kicked out of their slip. Also if the weather is poor, people don’t move their boats, so no one would be coming in to take a slip when the travel conditions are not good.
There are other travel circumstances that make this a very different situation. There are two ways to travel around the Florida Keys. You can travel “inside” in Florida Bay or “outside” in the Hawk Channel, which is technically the Atlantic Ocean. The Hawk Channel is inside the reef that lies just off the Keys which generally makes the waves and conditions in the channel milder. We hear from many cruisers that you can travel inside any time and that the conditions are never bad – we find that very hard to believe. The other problem with traveling inside is that our next stop in Key Largo can only be accessed from the outside. There are very few locations where you can cross from the inside to the outside which makes traveling inside and then going outside difficult.
You can probably tell I am a bit frustrated about this situation. I’m sure everything will work itself out – and how bad can it actually be – we’re in the Florida Keys!
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