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Traveling the Keys

Wisefam22

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What is best place to put boat in the water in northern keys and travel south?

We are thinking of spending week in the keys on February either driving and camping with boat at bahi honda state park, or dropping in someone in north keys and traveling down and hotel hopping for the week. Would be sun-friday or Saturday most likely.

Open to any and all suggestions.
 

Danielmailin

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Options to drop your boat in Key Largo are limited,

John Pennekamp State park is nice but limited parking and usually full by the morning.
Same for Harris Harris Park.

Caribean Club would be my third option, but you have no dock to tie too, is drop and go

Latin America Marina does offer more parking, but is a rough ramp to use, doable but not the best ramp to pull in and out. They do offer secured gated parking and always have space.
Is only 1 lane and gets really busy on the weekends.

See link below:

http://www.floridabywater.com/florida-keys/key-largo/boat-ramps
 

Danielmailin

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seanmclean

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Subbing along to this thread. Would love to do an Island Hopping trip.
 

robert843

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I will leave this oldie but goodie here

 

Ralph MIA

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We recently stayed at the Coconut Palm Inn in Tavernier and it was awesome.

It is a 20+ unit hotel with a small public boat ramp and 14 boat slips. It’s on the bay side and a 15 ride to the ocean side.

I suggest you stop by any dive shop and pick up a dive map of all the reefs. This map will give you a description of the reefs as well as the GPS coordinates.

Good luck!
 

swatski

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Subbing along to this thread. Would love to do an Island Hopping trip.
Absolutely, same here! Funny we're just talking about that.
Thanks everyone who is willing to contribute.

--
 

Wisefam22

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I've been to keys, but long ago as a kid. I was thinking of island hoping and starting north working down to key west and heading back making it 2 down staying in key west for day and 2 back... or finding a nice place in the middle of keys and using boat to explore both directions (towards mainland and keywest).

Bahia Honda State Park seems like a place kinda would enjoy staying when we aren't on the boat.

Thanks for all the info and video keep it coming!
 

Wisefam22

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Here is a write up I just found.

Out Adams Cut at key Largo to the ocean and down on the Ocean side to Key West

The Reef (Hawk Channel) that go out from the Keys on the east side protect the water so it's alway usaully at most 2 -4's all the way to Key West

As someone said above - buy some charts and you'll see..
Take the "Route 1 of the Atlantic," Hawks Channel, a well-marked waterway 11-16 feet deep, that follows the reef from Miami to Key West. If you charter a boat in Miami, you can pick and choose among spacious trawlers, luxurious motor yachts, or swift catamarans. Just remember to get one with a shallow draft (4-1/2 feet or less) -- the Keys' skinny waters don't take kindly to deep-keeled boats.

Key Largo, the first island south of the Florida mainland, is 40 miles and 40 years away from Miami, and the tropical scenes just get better the further along the 105 miles you travel to Key West. Your trip takes you through much of the 2,800-square-mile Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

The following is one suggested itinerary:

Day 1: Miami to Key Largo

Get your boat and head to Key Largo, where diving and snorkeling reign. Grab a mooring buoy for $15 a night at John Pennekamp, the nation's first underwater park, and take a look at what lies beneath. Some 800,000 divers a year come to Key Largo, so be sure to keep a lookout for red and white "diver down" flags as you're traveling.

John Pennekamp State Park abuts the Key Largo Marine Sanctuary wherein lies one of the most famous dive sites in the world, "Christ of the Deep." This nine-foot, 4,000-pound bronze statue, a replica of one off the coast of Italy, has been the site of many an underwater wedding. Even better, if the happy couple hasn't dived into the depths, they can honeymoon at the nearby Jules Verne, the world's only underwater hotel.

Besides the reef, the Keys are full of accidental and manmade shipwrecks to dive on. In the past 20 years, 23 artificial reefs have been created by scuttling ships ranging from retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters to an 80-ton wooden shrimp boat.

Day 2: Key Largo to Islamorada

Billed as the "sportsfishing capital of the world," Islamorada is an angler's paradise. Go offshore in the morning and try your luck with the dolphin, sailfish and marlin. In the afternoon, hire a small boat and guide (ask local tackle shops for recommendations) and head into the "back country" -- the shallow waters and mangrove-strewn islands of Florida Bay -- for delicious snapper, permit and snook. Or try your luck at bonefishing and attempt to land one of these elusive, transparent creatures in 18 inches of water from a specially built "flats" boat.

For a less taxing way to connect with our finned friends, head over to Robbie's restaurant to feed the rotund tarpons who live under their docks, and try their special "grits and grunts" for breakfast. Tie up at Smuggler's Cove Marina and Resort, where a view of the sunset shows why "Islamorada" means "purple island" in Spanish.

Day 3: Islamorada to Middle Keys

No one ever tires of watching dolphins play in a boat's bow wave. The Keys have several varieties of the friendly mammals. To play with them, there are five dolphin centers in the Keys. At the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, just a few miles north of Marathon, a half-day "Dolphin Encounter" lets you socialize and swim with these extraordinary mammals.

Hawk's Cay Marina, also a full-service resort for landlubbers, has a dolphin program geared just for the shorter species among us. Even if you don't have kids, this is a great place to tie up for the night. To anchor out, try Marathon's Boot Key Harbor, a refuge for cruisers and live-aboards in the Keys for decades, which now has new moorings. Leaving Marathon, you'll see the world's longest segmented bridge, the Seven Mile Bridge, over Moser Channel. Stop by Pigeon Key, a five-acre parcel that once housed more than 400 railroad, bridge and highway workers. Today it's on the National Register of Historic Places with a museum and marine research facilities.

Day 4: Middle Keys to Lower Keys

Some of the 30 inhabited Keys are more built up than others. The Lower Keys fall in the "others" category, with two National Wildlife Refuges (Blue Heron and Key Deer), a state park and a sprinkling of New Age shops.

There's a world-class resort at Little Palm Island where couples pay $800 per-night for the "cheap" rooms on this tranquil, beautiful island that looks more like the South Pacific than South Florida. For $350 per-night (not counting the 25% BoatU.S. discount) there are 14 slips at the resort's marina, and amenities include kayaks, windsurfers and launch service to and from the island (not that you'll want to leave).

Just three miles away is Looe Key, a gorgeous shallow reef full of sponges, soft corals and vibrant elkhorn and staghorn coral thickets, named after the HMS Looe, which hit it in 1744. (During the 1700s and 1800s, the Keys averaged almost a shipwreck a year.) Each July, it's the site of the Keys' Underwater Music Festival, where the Snorkeling Elvises and the Seapremes -- acts found nowhere else on Earth -- perform.

Days 5-7: Key West

Although it's only two-by-four miles in area, Key West is overflowing with history -- and histrionics. Boasts its Tourism Development Council: "Key West has been a mecca for dropouts, millionaires and tourists ... who were living the philosophy of 'Let It Be' well before the Beatles."

Inhabited for 4,000 years by the ancestors of today's Seminole Indians, Key West was first settled by outsiders in 1820, and by 1860 it was the wealthiest city in the nation. Its richest inhabitants earned their money salvaging ships that hit the reefs. A few purportedly even lit their lanterns in the wrong places, deliberately drawing the ships to their doom. In a "bad news, good news" move, officials installed lighthouses and warning buoys on the reefs in the 1880s, thus putting an end to some of the shadier dealings and sky-high earnings.
 

Wisefam22

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Also looks like you can break this trip up into multiple trips. Key largo has a weeks worth of activities within 30 miles or so by boat.
 

COtoFLsurf

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@Wisefam22 as mentioned above there are ramps accessible in Key Largo/Tavernier area at Pennekamp State Park, Harry Harris Park, Caribbean Club, Mangrove Mikes, Founders Park, and a bunch of others. None of them are huge fancy ramps, but all will serve you just fine. Note that they will charge for car/trailer parking, and since you will be gone I would personally opt for a Pennekamp or similar municipal park since a bit more secure than an open parking lot like at Caribbean Club. Sample itineraries are easy to come by, but DEFINITELY get a local chart and STUDY it before heading out each day, as "shallows" here can literally mean seagrass immediately below a glassy inviting surface. Have fun!
 

seanmclean

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COtoFLsurf

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@seanmclean, pretty sure Postcard Inn is still closed, they are getting close to opening back up but definitely check with them once your dates are set.
 

JDinfla

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Postcard inn should have rooms soon, but its in Islamorada.
 
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seanmclean

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Ah right, it is Islamorada. I think it reopens this summer, but I'd be looking for sometime next summer for my trip so it didn't phase me.

I still need to play with the itinerary dates a bit, I don't know that I'd want two days each in Islamorada/Marathon, may cut that down or skip one in favor of extra time in KW. A run out to Marquesas seems neat, too.
 

AlphaKap

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Now this sounds like a fun trip. As much as I would like to do Bimini trip, this sounds more fun to me.
 

seanmclean

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Bimini is still on my list, but with the issues of late I may hold off a season or two. I figure even with less than ideal weather conditions, can still make it work versus having to make a potential go/no-go decision for bimini. Maybe I could blow my entire vacation load from work and do them back to back, to save me from having to trailer from NJ to FL twice.
 

Wisefam22

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We were thinking February but might make it april on sons spring break instead. We looked at camping and spending week around key largo and then if wanted to trailering to middle/lower keys for different days.

I want to make boat trip down to KW and back to largo but that have to wait and explore one half first.

Its 12 hours from my place down would probably leave Friday after son get off school and break drive up (my sister lives in jacksonville). Arive in largo mid day on March 30th and spend the week down there and start making drive back on Saturday april 6th.
 

Wisefam22

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Just planned out week in June instead of doing bimini.

Used homeport which allows me to upload maps/routes from laptop to my garmin. We will run about 400miles in the week.

Staying in key largo sat-tuesday
Marathon tuesday-saturday when we leave.

We will spend all of Wednesday in key west.

The longest stretch is from marathon back to herbert Hoover marina which is 79 miles.

If you have garmin with sd card download your maps from garmin install homeport and use laptop to build routes super easy.
 
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