Since our arrival in Marathon on the 23rd of December the weather hasn’t been the best. A really beautiful day will be followed with about a week of really crappy weather before another nice day comes along. Needless to say we’ve spent a lot of time on the boat.

We have been very fortunate to have friends here who have cars! Now, I know all you folks are getting pretty excited about that but wait till you hear what we get to do. One day we drove with Gary and Marcia to Walmart in Florida City about 2 hours away. We got to stop at World Wide Sportsman (saltwater Bass Pro Shop) in Islamorada on the way. My favorite store!!! Harv and Anne took us to No Name Pub on No Name Key on the other side of the Seven Mile Bridge. They ain’t lying when they say they have great pizza. It was awesome. Very cool decor.

We’ve gotten rides to Specialty Hardware, Walgreen’s, Publix, K-Mart, West Marine, Daffy Doug’s Dollar Store and the list goes on and on. We know how to have a good time. When you live on land all these things are just a routine part of your day. For us though this kind of mobility is really special and we certainly appreciate our facilitators.

I celebrated my 61st birthday last Friday and it was the last nice day we’ve had since. It got really cold and windy. On the water that’s a miserable combination. That dinghy ride becomes almost unbearable. Sunday was the worst so far. This screen shot says it all.

This kind of weather is very hard on the wildlife. We’ve seen many dead fish and reportedly there has been hundreds of sea turtles admitted to the Turtle Hospital here in Marathon.

On the bright side, the sunsets have been quite nice.

(Apologies for the mediocre photography lately. My good camera got wet in one of the torrential downpours we’ve experienced. Yes, it rains in the boat.)

OK, you got to ask yourself, “What does an alligator biting an elf on the ass have to do with Christmas?” Good question, I have no answers other than, this is the Keys! Christmas in the Keys is pretty different. The decorations, which were plentiful, were mostly aquatic or tropical variations of Santa, elves, etc. Lots of boats and of course the above pictured alligator.

We went to a Christmas Eve candlelight service with several of our cruising friends. Pretty easy to pick out the cruisers with their shorts, tee shirts and Crocs. This would be our second year to enjoy the music at this service and it was great as usual. Christmas Eve dinner was wings at Hurricane, a local cruiser hangout and then back to the boat to wait for Santa.

Mary had decorated the mast with garlands and our ornaments and we awoke to presents under the “tree”. Goliath even got into the spirit as he tore into his gifts and later enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

Christmas day we had dinner at the City Marina. Harbormaster Richard Tanner and his wife cooked the turkeys and hams and organized the entire dinner. It was quite an undertaking. No one went away hungry.

A week later, New Years Eve was celebrated aboard Camelot the catamaran with delicious food and good company. We retired early but did ring in the new year as fireworks exploded all over and boat horns sounded throughout the harbor.

Soon we will have to get done to the business of making preparations to go to the Bahamas.