Leaving Key West tomorrow

 Today was busy. We fueled up the boat, filled the water tanks, borrowed a fellow boater's car and went grocery shopping to provision for the Bahamas and beyond.

We plan on leaving the dock around 7:00. That is, I want to leave at 6:30, and Ann said closer to 7:30, so I assume we'll meet somewhere in the middle. The marina staff will not be here yet, but a friendly neighbor who is an early riser offered to help us with our lines as we depart.

A reminder that if you want to track us in real time when we are under way, I have set up a Garmin InReach that will be online. Go to https://share.garmin.com/share/AviRubin  The password is Gimel. Every 10 minutes a dot will be placed on the map showing our location.

Tomorrow, our plan is an 81 nautical mile run, mostly East and slightly North to Rodriguez Key where we will drop the anchor overnight. The next morning it's off to Bimini, Bahamas for 2 days.

On either side of the fire extinguisher, you can see the sight guides for our fuel tanks, which are completely full. We are holding almost 1,800 gallons of diesel right now. I prefer not to buy fuel in the Bahamas as the quality is questionable, according to what I've read and been told.

I used the davit (crane) to bring our bikes up to the flybridge where I secured them next to the jet ski. The second one was much easier than the first because I had figured out how to do it through trial and error.

Traveling to Florida from Annapolis was not fun for Gimel, and it was a real challenge for us. So, we decided to have him driven back home. We felt like we were sending a child off to camp. He will be waiting for us when we return in early April and will hang out with a trusted friend. Gotta love the gig economy, basically airbnb for pet delivery.

We stocked up on fresh drinking water, as we prefer not to drink from the boat's tanks. Here is our overflow, 9 gallons. We also have around 10 more gallons in the galley and in storage on the boat.

As we prepared everything for our trip, we saw a manatee right next to our boat. Later, we saw a mom (presumably) and a small baby one together. 

I found this sign at the Moondog Cafe in Key West very helpful.

We purchased a key lime pie tonight from the Publix Supermarket. Word has it that this is as good as or better than most of the restaurant pies, so we'll have to judge for ourselves.

We're very excited to be on the "road" again. We have several fun places planned, mostly centering around pickleball, in the next few weeks. Aiming to arrive home the first or second week of April.