Marathon by Aquadog

Marathon, Middle Keys, 1999
Author: AquaDog

I just returned last night after a four day excursion to Marathon (the Middle Keys). The primary mission of this trip was to gather up our per person limits of "bugs", return to home, Ft. Myers and live off the "bug" meat for at leat a month, and also distribute the remainder to family and friends....didn't work out that way. We dove everyday in some so-called "reliable" bug holes. Only to find bugs under the legal limit. All told, we collected 8 legal sized bugs...that we just grilled besides some steaks and such and had a meal fit for Kings. So there's the downside. The upside was I was not at work, I was on VACATION, strawberry daquaries, Buffett music in the air, good friends, diving everyday, good food, and cool niteclubs. So here's a peek at what we did during the four day trip to Marathon. Day 1: We leave Ft. Misery at OH GOD THIRTY in the AM, drive cross state pulling a 20 ft. Grady White sport boat. We arrive in Marathon before 10 am. Can't check into the condo till the afternoon hours so with all our tanks already filled before we left, we put the boat in the water and out we go for the first dive.....no bugs. Back on land by check-in time and we do so without a hitch. Haul all our luggage and dive gear up to the room. We go out to dinner at the Coral Grill Restaurant in Islamorada and eat enough food at the buffet tables to get thrown out by management and the promise to never return. Then we arrive at Woody's niteclub and take in the show by the legendary "BIG DICK & the EXTENDERS". What a side-splitting funny guy BIG DICK is, and his blues band is just terrific. I remembered Walter laughing about the name of this group when we were at the June KL trip. We made back to the condo in Marathon by 2 am. Up at 9am, breakfast at the "Stuffed Pig" diner, we eat enough food for management to look at us like they're saying "thank Gawd, we don't offer a breakfast buffet". We repeat this diving for lobster but no lobster big enough to take. We persist and find a few the legal size. Then after dinner, its off to Gary's Sports Bar in Marathon, a huge, cavernous and well decorated...but nearly empty sports bar. We played pool, darts, watched a pro football game on one of the 30 TV's in there, played video_shoot 'em up" games and even Fooz-ball.

Next day, we decide to dive a good reef and boy did we pick a winner, we dove the Sombrero Reef and this was just beautiful, tons of life, gargantuan coral heads that rise like buildings. I even found a tiny three-headed cave down under it. Water temp: 87 deg., Max Depth: 30 feet, Time, 1 hr. 5 min. Then we returned to the bay side a for more bug hunting and failed miserably. On the last day, we wanted to dive a wreck and I knew about the Thunderbolt, so I hooked up with Capt. Lisa's Aquatic Adventures Dive Op. She's very friendly, outgoing and knowledgable. I did'nt realize who she was till I read one of her business cards and it dawned on me "duh!"...oh that, Capt. Lisa, from Diverlink. So I re-introduced myself as AquaDog from Diverlink. She remembered me, thank goodness cause anyone else would've called 911 after that intro. We got our tanks filled at her full-service dive shop. The next morning, 8:30 am, we're heading out to the Thunderbolt wreck on the Argonauda, a 38 ft. Island Hopper 8-pack boat with only 4 divers on it. Perfect! After briefing on the T-bolt dive with Capt. Roger, Lisa's "significant other", we descended down to the wreck.

This was a nice wreck, a 190 ft. Coast Guard ship used for catching lightning bolts///hence her name. She sits upright in 118 fsw. Currents were mild to medium, viz about 35-40 ft.. Nice penetration, she's diver friendly and you can see almost all of your routes out of the ship. We saw the usual marine life on the ship. On the next dive which was the Patch Reef, a so-so dive that was made interesting by the fact that we snatched to more large,legal bugs. And we got a look at a rather humungous Moray Eel sticking his head out of a brain coral. I got some good pics of this big ole- Eel....hmmmm, thought I saw him with Lou Gossett Jr's head in his mouth. (smirk) Other than that, just a pretty tame reef, viz was deteriorating down to 25 viz. Well, that about covers the highlights, all in all it was a fun trip, a great time, and some really cool diving.

And lastly, whatever Capt. Lisa's snafu was with the dive that was set up with the Key Largo group trip in June...I say give her another chance. She apologized profusely for it. And she does seem to have a pretty good dive charter outfit. And to anyone who gets to the keys (listen up, Beverly) go to Woody's on Islamorada and see BIG DICK & the EXTENDERS! they're a hoot! In the meantime, Dive Hard, AquaDog