Day 18 of our voyage "Headed to the Keys". 12/27/12

Last night was one of the worst nights we have had on our entire journey!!! We were anchored in a small cove just at the north end of Key Largo. About 1am Rodney was awakened by severe pouring of rain and all our windows were open!! Lots of water to be cleaned up, but he did it and never woke me up!!! I was dead asleep!!! I was awake several times after that to our boat tossing and rolling about!! We were talking and said man it sure is rough tonight!!! WELL I woke up again at 4:10am to go to the bathroom, and Rodney said go look and see if we are still stable. When I looked out the window in our living room we were about 50 feet from the trees, which means we had move almost a half mile from where we were anchored!! We jumped Into some sweatpants and sweatshirts as the wind is still blowing 20 miles and hour and proceed to get our boat out of the mud it was now sitting on!! We decided to try and get to a better cove for stability and moved on down the waterway about 3 miles and found a better place to anchor and stay the rest of the night!!!!
We went back and tried to rest a little until the sun came up, then we made coffee, pulled up anchor and traveled on into the city of Key Largo and found a wonderful harbor that we were able to have great access to the city and dinghy docks!!, What a beautiful place!!!!! We got Lexie to shore this morning for a nice long walk around the area. And then we took our bike to town for a 6 mile ride or so!! We had breakfast at Arbys!! woohoo!! ( it is the only fast food on the island) We went to Kmart, (oh what fun), and bought some things we needed!! Then to Publix grocery store for a few groceries!! You buy only what you really need as we had to carry what we bought In my backpack or in our basket on the bike!! We have a tandem bike so only one basket!!!
After dropping our purchases back off at the boat we decided to take another tour down to the Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park!! It is a world famous for its protected coal reefs!! What a wonderful day just to be a tourist!!! We rode our bike all through the park and enjoyed The aquarium at the park we had taken us a picnic lunch of cheese and fruit and bottled water so we sat at a nice shaded picnic table and enjoyed our goodies!!
We will be here another day as we are going to clean and wash our boat, I will wash clothes and do these housekeeping things we need to do but do plan to put our Kayak in the water tomorrow as soon as we can as I am ready for a paddle around this lagoon!, It is beautiful!!! Rod has to get under the boat tomorrow to see if there is any damage to our propellers when we went aground last night!! Got some pics today but only on my camera!! Sorry I still can not get them to the blog!! The sun rise and sunsets are awesome!! It's 80 degrees here !!!! I'm lovin it!!!
Blessings to all , Fran
Pics: Key Largo state park, and Rod sporting his new headlamp for reading and working !! it's a gadget!!