As some of you may know, my parents are about a week away from completing their Great Loop journey aboard their 38′ Marine Trader, Island Time. The Great Loop is the circumnavigation of Eastern North America, a continuous waterway connecting inland lakes and rivers with the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and the Great Lakes. For many …
This weekend, we attended the 9th annual Fort Myers Beach Pirate Festival, a weekend-long celebration of everything about being a pirate. Everyone was decked out in their pirate-y best and plundered the beach to attend events, booths, contests, hear live music and more. Thankfully, our friend Mary Kay happened to pick us up a couple of …
So, it’s been really slow here in the marina and we haven’t left the dock since our big Keys trip. Randy is currently catching up on some boat projects and we’re hoping to get off the dock very soon! What have we been up to? Life, in general. Corey is back to his school/homework routine …
With the dinghy already in the water from yesterdays trip to New Pass, we decided to go out again today. Johnny and April tried to find Mound Key a couple weeks ago with no luck, so Randy decided we would go there and show them where it is. Randy and Corey have been to Mound …
With our big trip to the Keys and Dry Tortugas being over Randy and I decided it was time to “hunker down” for August and September and stay land-locked. Staying land-locked will help us pay off some credit card debt after we had a few unexpected repairs in the Keys. While it’s pretty much hot …
All has been quiet on Blue Turtle since we returned from our Dry Tortugas and Keys trip. So, what have we been up to for the month of August? Well, mostly getting back into the work and school routine. Weekends continue to be mostly aquatic, either going to the beach or the marina pool. My …
So tomorrow it’s back to the grind—the routine, the work, the clients. I worked some last week, but was out some due to us breaking down in Naples and retrieving the car. I just watched this video and soooo wanted to be back there (Dry Tortugas). Don’t get me wrong, I love my work and clients …
It was time to head toward home the day after Mini Lobster Season began and we headed toward Flamingo, Florida. Flamingo is the southernmost headquarters of Everglades National Park and home to world-class fishing. Randy had been here before years ago on a fishing trip and learned of the anchorage. We decided we would stop …
After our weekend diving at Looe Key, we headed back to Marathon Marina for a couple days to fill the water tanks, take on some fuel and provision for our trip home. We planned to head west from Marathon, on the Gulf side, toward Content Keys for sport lobster season, also known as mini season. Mini …
Some of you may know what trawler surfing is when it was first introduced on this blog from our trip to South Seas on Captiva Island (scroll to the bottom of that post). For those who don’t know what it is, trawler surfing is sort of like waterskiing except the boat pulling you is a …
With one last weekend in the Keys before we head back, we decided to go back to our favorite dive spot so far—Looe Key—anchoring again at Newfound Harbor. We stayed at Newfound Harbor on Friday night and got up early on Saturday to head to the reef. We arrived before any other boats, before even …
The diving continued this weekend with a couple of trips out to Samantha Reef. The weather was perfect for diving and the water was smooth as glass. Samantha is an un-marked reef with no buoys so we had to be careful making sure we dropped our anchor in the sand and not on part of …