Enroute to Dry Tortugas

We left Key West this morning at 0830. I hooked the big wifi antenna up this morning just before we left, and was getting 2 commercial wifi providers pretty strong. I paid $12 for a 24 hour pass on the Beacon Net wifi... so we could download weather and email, and upload our 'weather guy' picture to the blog. We had wifi for about a half hour while motoring a miles or so off Key West. But then it died. The cell phone lost signal about an hour later, as we were nearing the Marquesas. We are officially
homeless, phoneless, and internet-less. I'm on tranquilizers to cope with it. (just kidding). I did get a little panicky when I realized late Saturday night that I wouldn't have much internet access after I left my house in Satellite Beach. But, I realize it's the old... "Price you pay for the life you lead".

It's beautiful out here, but the wind is negligible and we are motoring almost due West in glassy seas. Our ETA in Dry Tortugas is about 7pm.

We just passed Mel Fisher's dive boat on the Atocha Wreck. I took a picture and marked the spot on the chart.

We finally did a detailed plot of our trip from Dry Tortugas to Belize, including estimated speeds, etc, and realized that our most likely arrival has us arriving in Belize on Saturday. That usually means more Customs hassles and likely overtime fees. We are discussing options to delay entry til Monday. We may stay a day at Dry Tortugas if our weather assessment indicates everything looks stable. And/or we may hole up on the north end of Turneffe Reef in Belize til Monday morning.

Once we are sure when we are leaving Dry Tortugas, I will post a Float Plan for the trip.