On To The Everglades

Tomorrow we leave Key West. The boat is ready, and so am I. The diesel is topped off, and so are the water tanks. The holding tanks are empty. The course is plotted. And the weather forecast is excellent.

This next leg promises to be interesting…we leave Key West and head almost due north to Everglades City.

It’s a long leg – about 80 miles. Interestingly, if we headed south instead of north, we could be in Cuba in the time it will take us to reach Everglades City.

I estimate 6 hours – mostly out of the sight of land, with very few (no) navigational markers. Here’s what it looks like on the paper chart. Yes, I am a traditionalist – I still plan the trip on paper charts and then enter them into the chart plotter.

Once we leave Key West Bight, we steer to FK0200, make a 30-degree right turn, and head almost due north to FW0086. Because this is such a long leg – and because there are no intermediate ATONS (Aids to Navigation), I have created a couple of intermediate waypoints, called RRH4 and RRH5, just to reassure myself that I’m on course. If you look carefully at the top of the page, you can see the lines of longitude called out. There is a similar scale up the side of the page for latitude. I chose two points along the route, interpolated the longitude and latitude, and set them in the chart plotter as virtual waypoints. It breaks the long leg into three 20-mile increments.

So why Everglades City? Most folks would probably head due north for Marco Island or Naples. But I am intrigued by the Everglades. All of southwest Florida below Marco island is basically undeveloped – it’s the Everglades National Park.

So, we’re aiming for a place called Everglades City, up a river behind a set of barrier islands called the Ten Thousand Islands. That in itself should be an interesting part of the trip…following a winding channel through the islands to get to the river. The name is kind of ironic – there is certainly no city anywhere near Everglades City!

We’re staying at a B&B/marina called the Rod & Gun Club. Maybe I should have named my dog Gunner. We’d fit right in. Rod and Gunner…get it?

Here’s a photo of the Rod & Gun Club:

I understand that it is like taking a step back in time. All furnished from the time it was an exclusive getaway for presidents and other notables.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll post again if we have Internet connectivity when we get there.