Indian Key Pass

Saturday January 17, 2014
25 49 971 N
81 26 497 W

Marco Island seemed all condos and hotels so we decided to move on to the "10,000 Islands" region in the Everglades. Everything that we needed started and so the anchor was up at about 10:30 AM. It was a cool (in the 50's) but sunny morning - the first for a while. Breeze was out of the North and East. Rickshaw had departed much earlier.

Today we needed to pass around "Cape Romano". Its not a cape like Cape Shank or Cape Horn, its really a very large and moving sand bank that protrudes from the southern tip of Marco Island into the Gulf, with some very shallow water. This is our third time around "the cape" and this time I wanted to cut off some miles by taking one of the deep passages thru the sand.

As the day progressed the wind dwindled away until there was none - and the water went flat and glassy and the temp rose into the 80's - nice! Out target for the day was Indian Key Pass, a reasonably deep passage that winds its way thru the mangrove islands for about 10 miles and ends up as the Barron River.

We arrived about 3:00 PM and wended our way up the pass to our "isolated" anchorage, only to find a monster Nordhavn right in our spot. So we moved a bit further up stream and dropped the hook.

It was so calm...............

White pelicans 

Mangrove shore