We cruised up to Key Largo today in beautiful conditions. Waves were only about 1 to 2 ft in the Atlantic Ocean.
The water was a beautiful turquoise color, which I have only seen in the Carribean before, but I'm sure it must exist in many places. It's hard to get a picture of the colors. Like many things, it's best seen in person and a picture just doesn't do it justice. The darker areas are eel grass and the light areas are a white sand bottom.

We're staying at John Pennekamp state park, an underwater park with a land based marina. It's very interesting to get to the marina because after transiting the marked channel inlet you enter a mangrove maze and the channel is only partially marked with red and green daymarks every now and then. The rest of the time you are going through 8 ft. deep channels between 30 ft. tall mangroves, which is all you can see. There are a couple of shallow spots, so we came in at high tide.
The slip at the marina is right in the middle of the small park area. There are only 3 large slips, one for a park manager boat, one for the dive boat to take scuba divers out to the underwater park at Pennekamp reef and one for transients. We got the one for transients. The picture above shows the park office with the walkthrough to the dock behind it. You can just see the stern of Nonchalance through the walkway. The slip has power and water hookups and is $50 per night, which is less than a lot of places we have stayed. There are a number of smaller slips available for smaller transient boats.
This is the view from our bow at John Pennekamp park. We were having drinks and appetizers on the foredeck after we got in, which we usually like to do. It's fun to have "Miller Time" whenever you arrive, even if it's 2 PM.

We decided to stay here 3 nights so I could go snorkeling with Kathy at the reef tomorrow afternoon and then go diving the next afternoon. Then we plan to go up to Biscayne Bay near Miami, where we'll stay for a night or two.