Laurel and I said adios to Miami. As much fun as Miami can be, we were glad to be out of the hustle and bustle of that concrete jungle. After cruising under our last bridge the water opened up into a sailors playground, miles of deep clear water. We sailed all day with a great wind. The wind brought us to an anchorage at Sand Key just at the beginning of The Keys chain. There we hung out for a few days doing some more boat chores: replacing a halyard that broke, getting hoisted up the mast on a super sketchy rotten bosun’s seat, trying to figure out our man overboard gear and fixing our offshore rod by whittling one out of teak with my Swiss Army knife. I even did a little fishing around the island in the kayak but only caught some barracuda. Sand Key was a nice and quiet anchorage that worked out well for us due to the strong winds and rain that came on our second night. It finally feels like our trip has started: The water is clear, the weather is warmer and we are catching fish.

Today we left our quaint little Sand Key anchorage and sailed all day. The wind was WNW and it allowed us to sail through all the cuts and islands into the Key Largo area. It was a great day. We saw tons of dolphins, ate Griffin’s Famous French Toast for breakfast (homemade bread), ate bacon mozzarella pesto tomato sprout paninis for lunch, talked to our families and ate fresh snapper and minestrone soup for dinner. I think we could get used to this life…