A windy finale to the Keys trip

Forecast for our entire last week didn’t look good for boating as the winds were to be 20+ knots, so we’ve been doing some other activities.

Sunday – We undertook a biathlon: leisurely bike ride down to the seven mile bridge, then walk/ran the 2-mile portion of the old seven mile bridge. Much easier heading down to the bridge, rather than running/riding back into the really gusty winds. Along the way back on the bridge, we came across a couple who were asked to look around for a diver that hadn’t come back from diving the pilings. A man on a boat was frantically driving back and forth trying to locate the diver. He had called the coast guard in the meantime and in about 5-10 minutes the entire fleet showed up including coast guard, homeland security and marathon sheriff. Luckily, the coast guard immediately spotted the diver near a bridge piling further down where we were not looking. Turned out to be a safe ending!  Rode back to the house with a severe leg workout against the 20 knot winds, then endured some relaxation the rest of the day watching football and some movies.

Three departments on the scene for a missing diver near 7 mile bridge

Jalapeno’s been enjoying R&R here in the Keys too!

Monday– The forecast was right and the strong NE winds continued. Made some calls around town about getting the boat serviced/detailed, then I drove it over to the bayside to the boat ramp. Cindy drove over with the truck and trailer. We took the time to give her a trailer loading lesson, since it was a ghost town at the boat ramp due to the winds. She was able to back it down after a few tries, load the boat and pull it back up to street level. Success! Dropped the boat over at the marina, then decided we’d give the kayaks a try as we could likely stay in the lee of the island. Peddled over to Vaca Cut, caught some bait and tried fishing to no avail. Enjoyed a nice peddle back at sunset going downwind.

Stacked up real good near Vaca Cut on my last boat ride in the Keys for 2012

Tuesday – Woke up and took care of some bookwork stuff, still gotta pay bills and what not 🙂 Around 11, we decided to go for our normal 5k run up the road a bit. We had nothing else planned for the day, so we just kept on running east. They have a nice bike trail almost the entire length of Marathon. Ended up going about 6.5 miles to Grassy Key before turning back around.  About 3 hours later we arrived back at the house and ended up doing a walk/run half marathon! Our bodies would pay for that the rest of the day and the next couple days, so we took the rest of the afternoon off and got to bed early for our early morning adventure on Wednesday.

It would’ve been nice to have another few days on the boat this week, but actually works out good to have some free time to explore other things and get some planning done for our next adventure which is approaching quickly, NEW ZEALAND!