Bahia Honda, The Keys, Florida 24:39.466N 081:16.77W

Five Islands
John & Sue
Sat 4 Jun 2016 00:10
We let the mooring go at 07.40am and retraced our steps around Fleming Island and down the Main Ships Channel with the outgoing tide assisting us. We turned east at Marker number 12 into the Hawk Channel to commence our first day hop to Bahia Honda. Lovely sunny day with no wind (again) and calm seas.
Heading toward that gap in the bridge to our first anchorage - Bahia Honda

This is the old bridge and they have removed a span to allow boats to enter the protected waters between this bridge and the new bridge.

Nice place to anchor. We arrived on Sunday of a long weekend and this area is a camping and day use area and, you guessed it, there were people everywhere. We had several kayakers who paddled past to say hello, numerous fishing boats who came and went from a channel on the left which led to a ‘marina’ and swimmers galore. We swam the anchor in shallow, grass covered bottom. It was well buried.

We found this wrapped one of the props, not badly but a bit of a surprise. We think we picked up just before we entered the anchorage where we passed through a lot of weed.

This shows the camp ground on the right and the new bridge. At 1am in the morning we were woken by a helicopter passing low overhead. Sticking our heads up out the hatch above our bed we were greeted with red flashing lights and the helicopter which had landed on the bridge. Not sure what caused all the emergency services to be right next to us but the noise continued for several hours including another helicopter which also landed on the bridge. Not quite the end to our first day we had envisioned but certainly interesting.