With the wedding festivities over, it was time to focus on our trip. On Sunday, we said few goodbyes and did last minute prepping for the trip—running to Publix for groceries, loading provisions and gear onto the boat, etc. We left Snook Bight around 3:30-4pm and headed to New Pass to anchor and raft up Sea Crazy. Once there, we had a captain’s meeting with all crew and family to go over our plans for the trip to the Dry Tortugas. The plan was to leave around 1am with Sea Crazy leading since they have autopilot. We would follow behind them making it easier to drive in the dark with them leading us. Aboard Blue Turtle, we had Randy, Corey and I along with Randy’s nephews, Brandon and Matthew. Randy’s sister and brother-in-law, Tammy and Scott went with Sea Crazy.
The ride to the Dry Tortugas was beautiful and uneventful. It wasn’t as calm as we’d hoped for and we were getting hit in the beam with rollers the whole way there. We had a couple sea sick folks on the two boats, but we’d seen alot worse conditions to go through and counted ourselves lucky. The seas calmed a bit as we got closer to Garden Key and Fort Jefferson. We arrived around 6:30pm and while Sea Crazy anchored, we deployed a kayak along with Corey and Matt so they could paddle ashore. Once Sea Crazy was anchored, we rafted up next to them.
We deployed the dinghies and Randy, Tammy, Scott and I went ashore with our snorkel gear to snorkel around the fort. After a brief snorkel, Randy and I sat on the wall with a beer and watched the sun go down while Corey and Uncle Scott and Matt snorkeled. It was a beautiful sunset and a great way to start our time in the Dry Tortugas.
