Happy New Year!

We spent New Year’s Eve anchored in Pelican Bay at Cayo Costa, which is a really beautiful anchorage.





We shared it with 34 other boats, but there still was lots of room. We took the dinghy in to the uninhabited Cayo Costa park, which was all mangroves and beaches, both on the gulf side and the bay side. There were millions of shells, but mostly all small ones and 90% scallop shells.

Daisy loved the water and splashed happily through the tide pools and chased a stick thrown into the 6 inch surf.

We took a 2 mile dinghy ride to Cabbage Key, the island and restaurant about which Jimmy Buffet wrote “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. Even though you can only get there by boat, Cabbage Key was absolutely jammed with people. We were lucky to get a small place at the dock because all we had was a 12 ft. inflatable dinghy.


The bar was jammed with people and every wall was covered with thousands of dollar bills, signed by previous patrons, including one signed by Jimmy Buffet, of course. We put one up for Nonchalance. I guess it’s worth a buck to put yours up and take a picture. I would say the bills were at least 3 deep on every wall. At 3 PM, after we had our pina coladas in hand, the dockmaster came in at told the bartenders, no more drinks could be served. It was getting a little rowdy out there.

For dinner, all 4 of us had a cheeseburger.

It was a beautiful sunset…that’s Jay and Kay on the bow.

That night, I lit up my “fish light”, which is a 3 foot long fluorescent light tube that emits a bright green light. It attracted about a thousand minnow size fish which circled around the light constantly and these attracted larger (12” to 18”) fish that darted in and out to eat the bait fish. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. I tried fishing with dead mullet bait to no avail, but when I cast a Rattletrap into the water I caught this Ladyfish, which is a slim, foot long, night feeding fish.

At midnight, our boat horn was the loudest in the anchorage.