Land Ho!

About an hour out of Ft. Jefferson we caught up with our anchoring buddies from Marquesas.  Of course, Tim was like: Great, a bunch of us trying to anchor at once.  Thirty minutes later, I said: Look behind you Tim.  A 105 motor yacht with its launch leading it was steaming up our rear.

Look! A boat parade.  I was back being mistress of all things entering channels, so no pics of our boat parade.

Approaching Dry Tortugas is a bit odd, you actually have to loop around the Fort to get to the anchorage.  Some charts show the land bridge, some just report shoaling between the key that holds the fort and the key that is the bird sanctuary.  (It's a solid spit of land, folks.)

So after I got us lined up in the channel for Tim, I prep our headsets and what I we need in mind for anchoring.  Not too confident in our windlass, with good reason.  We got one problem solved with tightening the clutch, and I realized the second problem was the remote up in the bow wasn't working correctly.  Tim had put tape to protect the down button, but said tape was making the remote stick in down position.  Exciting stuff.

But, we got anchored.  Hung out for a bit.  As usual, everybody swung one way, but we went another.  I think it has to do with the shape of Elysium's hull and that big hunk of grounding plate, she just moves a bit differently.

Watched the motor yacht plant themselves right in the middle of the sailboats and thought, well, this should be fun.

They seemed okay also.

Approaching Fort Jeff.  We have to go completely around to wind up where you see the ferry boat.

Our first anchorage.  Straight off the coal docks (more about that later.)

Our boat parade friend, Champagne Cher.

Note our perpendicular arrangement with the other sailboats. (However--not the cat.)
Straight in front of us is the buddy boats from Marquesas rafted up together.