We were delighted to have a milder wind from the North so we confirmed our plan to cruise the Atlantic today. On the way, we passed down Snake Creek by Plantation Key with its beautiful vacation homes on the inlets cut to create waterfront and under the bridge on the Overseas Highway at Windley Key. The route was the shortest way to the Hawk channel which runs outside along the keys.
Tom had found the longitude and latitude of the Dry Rock coral reef off the coast of Key Largo and that is our destination. We found the Dry Rock location with not a grain of land in sight; no dry rocks at all, just ocean. This is part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and it is a well marked with floating buoys and mooring balls. This is a popular shallow water snorkeling spot over a living reef. The nation’s first underwater park, the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park includes approximately 190
square miles of coral reefs, sea grass beds and mangrove swamps. We arrived at lunch time, and were the only boat there when we chose 
our mooring ball and got out our masks and snorkels. It is amazing to discover what is under the bright blue water’s surface. This is the only living coral reef in North American - we saw rigid Elkhorn Coral and gracefully swaying purple sea fans. The guide book says there are 55 kinds of coral and over 600 species of fish living here. We saw incredible fish from neon blue parrot fish, to vertical yellow and black striped Sergeant Majors, fish with bright blue heads and yellow tails that looked like dyed Easter eggs, large navy blue grouper shaped fish, brown and white file fish, a 
yellow fish with red fins, brown and white fat spotted fish, and silver fish with yellow tails. Some moved in schools, but most darted in and 
out of the coral chasing each other like a game of tag or dancing. I even saw what I thought was a long silver king mackerel lying still near the bottom. It took us a white to find it, but this was also the location of the 9 foot bronze statue of Christ with His arms raised in prayer which was placed on the reef in August, 1965. The statue which weighs 20,000 pounds is a match to the Christ of the Abyss statue off the coast of Italy. This is a place where scuba divers have come to have an underwater wedding – I guess it is as close to a church as they could find under the sea. (this picture was taken from the www.keyshistory.org/artchristofthedeep.html website).We stayed there for a couple of hours including eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
and were joined by six or seven other boats, including a snorkeling tour boat. When we left there, we had a couple of hour ride north along Key Largo to reach the Biscayne Channel marked by deserted stick houses which were once privately own but now taken over by the National Park Service as part of the Biscayne Bay National Park.
Here we found the beautiful little Boca Chica Key with its old coral stone light lighthouse, chapel
and gently swaying palm trees. What a lovely place for us to dock for the night. It is really a small world – the two boats behind us were from Glendale, NC (in the mountains) and Topsail Beach, NC.
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