Rodriguez Key - at anchor

The water here is very clear! We can see our chain rode.

Caesar's Creek is a good anchorage as long as you have a shallow draft so entry over a 5 ft bar is not a problem (at high tide). This time we found it to be buggy, more so than our last experience. One downside is the flow of boats from the Bay to the ocean and vice versa. We don't mind the traffic but others might.

The high tide was late in the day so we had either a 7:00 am departure on a falling tide or a noon departure on a rising tide. After much hemming and hawing, we picked the rising tide. The advertised depth on the exit to the ocean is 7 ft but we've found it to be more like 5 ft or even a little less so we  settled for the rising tide later in the day. The route to Rodriguez Key is only 27 miles, about 4 hours. As it turned out the lowest depth we saw was 6 ft but it was with a 1 ft tide so the water is definitely not what's advertised on the nautical charts (7 ft at low tide). With our 4 ft 9 inch keel, we made the exit without incident and turned south.

Back of the boat, wine glass in hand, music in the background...

Hawk Channel was perfectly flat. There were no waves but there also was no wind so we motored to Rodriguez Key and dropped anchor in 7 ft of water knowing that we had a 1.5 ft tide with us (5.5 ft at low). Monday is our last leg to Marathon where we'll pick up the Mehaffeys late this week for the trip to Key West on Saturday or Sunday.