Marathon - Yet another anchoring adventure

Someone planted a cactus bed by the entrance to the parking lot of Marathon, very pretty

It’s Finn. Today I woke up and saw that we where close to our neighbors. Then I heard the motor. # 2 time this weak. So when I went up I saw us up close to our neighbors. So Nana moved us but she ran over the anchor line. We had to get our neighbors to help us. One ran his dink when the other one dived under. When the diver got out of the water he said we ran a ground. # Not good. so the neighbor in the dink had to pull us out of the mud. Meanwhile the diver had to CUT THE ROPE. I just carried messages from person to person. After that we had breakfast but the genset wouldn’t turn on. So we had to toast the bagels on the stove. They where a bit burnt but they still tasted good. I am getting better at my horn. That’s all we did BYE!!!            

Another example of the cactus bed

I think you get the gist of the morning's events from Finn's post. It was not good to wake up to find a boat snug up against your port side. We weren't actually touching but that was only because we both had hit bottom and he went farther into the shallows due to his less draft. We intended to just power forward and let the anchor pull us into deeper water but we didn't do the maneuver right and drifted  back into the anchor line from the boat we had been snug up against. Now the line was wrapped around our prop and we were going nowhere. 

Our last sunset at Marathon

The guy on the boat we were against offered to dive on his line and free the prop, a great offer which he proceeded to do. He had to cut his line to get it free and he also cut off the excess line around the prop. Now we could power forward but we needed to turn to starboard for deep water. That involved putting the anchor in the dinghy and taking it out at a right angle to the boat about 100 ft. After dropping it overboard from the dinghy (heavy! 70 lbs!), Ann put the prop in forward and as the boat moved ahead, the bow was swung to deeper water by the anchor, we were free. But now the genset wouldn't start. After an hour or so of debugging, it turned out to be debris in the raw water cooling intake. The genset has a safety feature to not turn on unless everything is perfect. Once cleared, the genset worked fine. 

After two days of this enjoyment, we are getting less enthused about anchoring in Marathon when there's a long waiting list. This week there were 35 waiting with the overflow anchored, very crowded. On Wednesday we're headed for Newfound Harbor to escape the crowds. Then it's on to Key West on Thursday.