The 4 Best Things (to us) about Marathon City Marina and Boot Key Harbor

. . . WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT MARATHON?

 


A lot when you’ve been living aboard a boat for a while or have come down to escape cold weather.

About the Area

If you've never been here, Marathon is located in the “middle keys” a short drive away from Key West. The city calls it a boaters' paradise, and its description is accurate. Some boaters and snow birds come to Marathon to stay the winter. Other boaters see it as a launching point for the Bahamas or the Dry Tortugas. 

The town covers several keys and has a large protected harbor, Boot Key Harbor. It has about 8,000 full-time residents, gaining many more visitors when winter arrives “up north.”

Here's city marina as seen from the mooring field, with its tiki hut gathering place and the marina office building with its WiFi area, lending library, mail center, cruiser work space and storage lockers.

At Marathon City Marina and Boot Key Harbor, the city provides over 200 mooring balls in the harbor, limited dock space in the marina, and the services that come with a marina – bathrooms, showers, laundry and pump outs. 

What do we like best about Marathon?

#1 -- The People We've Met are Terrific

Before arriving, we worried about meeting people on our sailing adventure. We'd shared a wonderful Thanksgiving in Bradenton with Pat and David on Sanctuary, but met few other cruisers until reaching Marathon. It's truly a cruisers' community.

We were lucky that Walt and Pat from New York took us under their wing just because we have a Catalina sailboat like their Waves of Grace, although theirs is 42 feet and ours 34 feet. In their four years of spending winters in Marathon, they've collected a wonderful group of friends, introduced us and included us in many get-togethers. 

Bonnie, Yasmine and Pat on a recent trip to Key West.

Some friends, like Sid and Bonnie on Fiu, are also from New York. Others, like Anna (and Rich, her husband whom we didn't meet) on Snow Goose, were from Michigan. While we aren't sure where Roy and Yasmine on Yasmine Ann are from, they are equally as delightful and fun -- good, kind people, all.

We've met other new friends on our own, Ron and Judy on Pioneer from Vancouver, Canada, and Jim and Joey on My Pleasure from New Jersey, among them. The same adjectives used above apply to them, too. It took us a couple of weeks to learn that we have to participate in the activities here in order to meet people. Meeting people doesn't just happen as it seems to at home.

#2 -- The Climate in the Winter is Excellent

Temperatures have been in the 70s and low 80s since we arrived. Occasionally a “cold front” will come through when temperatures plunge to 64 degrees. A steady breeze almost always blows in the mooring field and the temperature drops to the mid-60s at night, making for really great sleeping weather. Best of all, there are no bugs.

The mooring field is laid out in rows. This photo shows about a third of the field.

#3 -- Cruisers Organize a Lot of Interesting Activities

While the marina provides basic services, the cruisers add the lagniappe, or the little something extra, as they say in Louisiana. Each morning at 9 the Marathon Cruisers' Net – a morning VHF radio program -- comes on to welcome/say goodbye, make announcements of events or activities, ask for expertise on boat repairs or improvements, and buy/sell/trade/giveaway items. Sometimes you have to be quick on the mike to get those giveaway items.

VHF Channel 68 is the home of the 
Marathon Cruisers' Net.

Marathon cruisers conduct yoga, tai-chi and mahjong (!) classes. Cruisers organize softball practice and play tennis, basketball or could even ride skate boards if we have them, thanks to the city park being next door. Weekly talks about boating subjects are held, usually conducted or at least organized by the cruisers. This week's topic is sail repair and maintenance while underway. It sounds like something we don't want to happen, but all want to know about.

Steve, our island music rocker dude 
next-door-neighbor.

There are festivals, community theater, and music, music, music! Eric Stone and the Stoners (with our mooring ball neighbor Steve, his lead guitarist) played to a crowd of sailors at a local club on a recent weekend. Every Saturday, Gary on Saturday's Child and the other talented singers and musicians in Boot Key Harbor perform free at the city marina tiki hut. So far this year, the city has put on a two-day music video festival with local bands and plans to throw a family fun festival next weekend.

And if we get tired of Marathon activities, there's always Key West. It's just a low-cost bus ride away.

#4 -- Boat and People Services are Enough and Nearby

Marathon is a town of small businesses, with no major malls and no Wal-Mart. The stores Marathon has are enough for what we need. It also helps that most of those businesses are fairly close to the marina. That's not been the case with the towns and marinas we've passed through so far.

Marathon has a really great concentration of boat service companies with a variety of specialties, more than we've seen since our travels began. Whether it's advice, parts for the boat, or someone to do the work, there's a business in Marathon that can handle it. And yes, West Marine is down the street, too.

David at Sea Air Land Technologies (SALT) installs
 the wiring for Carina's new solar panels.

The services for people in Marathon are convenient. Less than a mile away, Home Depot, Kmart and Publix are probably the largest businesses in town. We've added to our gas container and tool collections, found things for Carina that make life aboard better or easier, and go to the market several times a week -- just because we can. 

Where To From Here?

Oddly, as much as we like it here, we are feeling the need to move on. We have developed wanderlust, it seems.

We have a few things to do first --

• have Carina's inverter fixed to charge from all sources of energy;
• have a diver clean Carina's bottom hull and props of barnacles that grow so fast in salt water and cause the boat to sail so slow;
• install Garhaur outboard motor lifts to act as davits to lift the dinghy out of the water when we're underway; and
• attend the Miami Boat Show by land in mid-February -- just because we are close to Miami, to look, not buy. Okay, if the truth be known, we're going because we want to attend the Cruising Outpost magazine party at the boat show. 

Then we'll look for a weather window to get to Miami by water and sail on to Vero Beach.