Day of the Iguana

Riggs and I have now been in Marathon for 5 weeks, as time whizzes by. We'll be starting northwards probably sometime next week, if the weather cooperates.

Visitors aboard Spray while in Marathon have included Bev, Steve&Connie, Ken, and now Sheila, who has been here for almost two weeks and sadly returns to Maine on Saturday. For Sheila one big draw to cruising is to observe the different life forms, so we've been searching out encounters with various seabirds and sea creatures, with mixed luck.

On Monday we left Marathon for an overnight visit to Islamorada, where we made the required visit here (their coconut shrimp are the absolute best), and had an all-around nice time, but on the way up saw no sea critters except maybe a glance at a diving sea turtle of some kind. So on the return trip we decided to route ourselves out to Sombrero Key, where we could tie to a mooring over a coral reef and hopefully see some critters. It was pretty choppy out there so we didn't stay long nor see any sea life there but on the way out we did encounter 2 groups of bottle-nosed dolphins (like Flipper) which Sheila hadn't seen before. One dolphin came to check us out and was diving directly beneath Spray. We were on the flying bridge and had a great view.

On another critter front we had earlier found a colony of Iguanas living in a canal cul-de-sac off of Sister's Creek here. Yesterday we went back with the camera (which has a nice zoom feature) to snap a few photos. Sheila tried to pull the dinghy in as close as possible before the iguanas would jump into the water to escape, while Riggs was making a big fuss (he REALLY wanted to chase those iguanas). These iguanas are not native here but are descendants of escaped pets. They are definitely interesting.

One thing Sheila hasn't seen yet and would really like to is a manatee. They have been into the marina here but not recently. Here's hoping for an appearance soon, since we'll be driving up to Orlando tomorrow afternoon as Sheila flies north first thing Saturday.

It seems we are finally getting seasonable weather here: Lows in the mid 60's and highs near 80. Now I'm complaining about the heat!