Turtle soup anyone? - Day 124 - Marathon, FL

The day started with our morning ritual; checking the weather in Chicago with Weather Underground and the news with Yahoo.  Needless to say the weather in Chicago reached the level where you would write home to mother.  Heavy snow overnight and high winds that closed down Lake Shore Drive. 

Yahoo reported that the unrest in Egypt was still going strong. Weatherunderground changed their format and we spent a half hour exploring the new capabilities.  We liked what we saw. Note: We have been weatherunderground.com subscribers for years.

Meanwhile, our weather was 75 degrees and sunny with light winds from the southeast.

Today's adventure was a visit to the Turtle Hospital in Marathon with Darryl and Sue.  We arrived at 2:00 PM for a 90 minute guided tour.  The hospital was founded in 1984 and actually started out as a motel.  The tour was terrific.  We got to see four of the five varieties found in the Gulf and got a comprehensive explanation of how the hospital treats its patients.  Check out their website http://www.turtlehospital.org/.

We also learned about the factors that kill and injure there creatures, one of which was agreesive hunting in the Key West area where they were used as food in restaurants.  Fortunately for the turtles, Florida banned the practice.  Hence there is no more turtle soup.  Still the turtles face injury from plastics discarded by humans and collisions with boats, most of which are fatal.

Following the tour, Darryl and I followed up with Eric of Shoreline, an outboard motor servicer.  We both had arranged to have Shoreline perform preventive maintenance services.  In my case, Shoreline had to pull the dingy our of the water in order to perform the services on the Tohatsu 30 HP.  In Darryl's they just pulled the 9.9 off the dingy and took it to the shop.

Technician driving the dingy back to Burdines

I was fortunate to find a servicer who could work on short notice and had a trailer to pull the 11 foot Caribe RIB out of the water (she weighs 750 pounds).  Shoreline changed the oil, the oil filter, the impeller and the lower unit oil.  They also checked and cleaned the fuel system.  Total cost was $352.27.  A very fair deal.  Note: I've been trying to get the Tohatsu serviced for the last two months and found it challenging to get a servicer who could fit us in and pull the boat.

After test driving the dingy on a quick open water run at speed (30 MPH), I joined Diana, Sue and Darryl at Lazy Days for cocktails and another magnificent sunset.

Then the four of us hopped in the dingy for a 3 mile trip up Boot Key Harbor to Annette's Lobster House, which is just across the street (Route 1, the Overseas Highway) from the City Marina.  Dinner was terrific as was the setting.  Surprisingly, Annette's, which was definitely nicer that Spark's, was decidedly less crowded.  We attributed this to its not being on the water.

At 8:45 PM, we retrieved the dingy and motored back to Marathon Marina.  The ride back was magical with a temperature of 67 degrees, anchor lights identifying occupied moored vessels and the stars shining bright above.  We had a slight challenge retracing our path as the breadcrumbs I dropped seemed to have washed away.  We found are way with very little difficulty.  We dropped off our friends and then headed back a half mile to Burdine's.  We finished the evening taking the furry kid for walk.

Written by Les.