Our final week in Marathon began with some exciting weather on Sunday morning. I did my best to capture the lightning on camera.

The weather cleared by the afternoon, and around 5 pm our dock neighbors from Massachusetts, Ann, Sandy, and Schooner the Goldendoodle, left the harbor and anchored out at the beach for an early Monday morning departure for home to Massachusetts. Neighbors Carrie and Mike will leave on Friday, as will we. We’ll be leaving the security of this “so clean it’s sterile” marina for an unusual journey ahead, with as few stops as possible. Doug has verified fuel availability as we head up the Florida coast.

Doug has been getting in some bike riding this week, since his phone went for a swim on Sunday afternoon. The Verizon store had zero phones in stock, so Doug cycled up and down the Overseas Highway looking for alternatives and ended up at the AT&T store, “The Cellular Touch,” where they were extremely helpful, sending him off with a replacement phone – same # as before, and a large learning curve.

Our dive guy cleaned the bottom of our boat yesterday, the pumpout guy was here this morning, the laundry is done, food & beverages are stowed, water tank is filled as are the spare water and fuel jugs, and we’ll finish making the rounds to say good-bye to the amazing marina staff later today. As long as there are no changes to the weather forecast between now and tomorrow morning, we will untie our dock lines and start our journey home.

As of today, there are 79 cases of Covid-19 in Monroe County, which is less than one one-thousandth of the county’s population according to Keys Weekly. While the roadblocks remain in place on US 1, The Keys will open up to “locals only” next week.