Friends from Illinois visited today. Roger and Cheryl Keast, whom have a boat near ours in Harborside Marina in Illinois, are vacationing down in the Keys. They’re at Key West in their Land Yacht and drove up to see us here at Newfound Harbor. We’ll be at Key west too, but on the same day they leave. We had a noce visit and went out into the Atlantic to see if the waves were calm enough to go slow trolling fishing, but the 3 ft. waves were just too much rock and roll to make it comfortable to go slow. The stabilizers don’t help much at very slow speeds. So it turned out to be just a nice ride out to the ocean past Little Palm Island, a quick cruise, and back in. But it was enough that Roger said he got his “boat fix” before he and Cheryl went back to Key West.

Kathy, Daisy and I took the dinghy into the “Parrotdise Grill” under the Keys bridge to the Gulf side. It’s a dog friendly restaurant if you’re at the outdoor tables. They make an excellent Lobster Reuben sandwich.
Yeah......more fish pictures. I went fishing off the stern of Nonchalance just before sunset and caught this little mutton snapper on a squid. I had had a few larger fish hit the bait, but didn’t hook them. Then after the sun went down, the fish stopped biting, but I left my line in the water with a squid on it.
Then, after dark, when Kathy and I were playing cards the line started stripping off the reel so fast it startled us. I grabbed the rod and caught this hammerhead shark. While small for a shark, he put up a nice fight anyhow. When I got him up to the boat I didn’t want to gaff it because it would injure it, so after lifting it up with the line for this picture, I just removed the hook with long nosed pliers and freed it without touching it.

We’re on our way again tomorrow, going down to Boca Chica, which is only about 10 miles from Key West. There’s a big sailboat race going on in key West and boat space availability is tight until Monday, January 22nd when the sailboat racers all leave and we get there. I’d rather have it quieter there anyway.