Sea Scouts Summer Trip: Day 4

Everyone slept in late at the Marathon Marina. Most of us slept in the air conditioned cabin, but Ezi and Nick figured out how to set up the hammocks and spent the night suspended from the boom. It was about 9:40am when the ship pulled out and headed north.
Charlotte wanted to stop to snorkel every couple of hours. So, we tried to find snorkel spots before the Underwater Buddha, our original planned snorkeling spot for the day. The first place we looked for, the Coral Gardens, we couldn’t find. There was only one boat in the area and no mooring balls so we moved on. We came upon Alligator Reef, named after the USS Alligator which sunk there in the 1800’s. In the middle of the reef there there was a tower lighthouse with an attached platform. There were tons of boats anchored around the reef. It was absolutely amazing for snorkeling. There were barracuda, large schools of colorful fish, coral of all kinds, and we even saw a 3-4 ft nurse shark. The boys had fun flipping off the platform into the water.
From Alligator Reef, it was only a short trip to the Davis Reef and Underwater Buddha. Unfortunately, the area with mooring balls was really large and we had no idea where exactly we could find the Underwater Buddha. We swam over large areas of the reef, which was much deeper than Alligator Reef. We saw beautiful fish and coral, but neither were as dense as our previous stop. Still pretty great though. Diving this spot would be exciting. The kids took out the zodiac to search different areas for the Buddha, but we never found it.
Sam’s ear started to really bother her as she, Sue, and I swam back to the boat. The ship was quite far from us because we had swam a good distance trying to find the Buddha. We eventually flagged down the kids in the zodiac and they gave her and Sue a ride back to the boat.
Nick had slipped in the boat and scraped his back. Shortly after that Ezi stepped on some broken glass and we from this incident we discovered that Olivia’s mask had shattered on the deck.
After cleaning that up things calmed down for a while. Nick and Ezi made a delicious hot dog, baked beans, and corn on the cob dinner. Just as everyone began eating we reached the anchorage at Rodriguez Key. As Doug turned the boat into the anchorage there came a loud and shocking noise. We killed the engines and found out that the life ring had come loose from the boat and the rope attached to it had gotten wrapped around the prop.
From the anchorage several fireworks shows were visible and we had nonstop fireworks for about 3 hours. While the fireworks sparkled to the west, Nick and eventually Edon worked on liberating the prop from the rope wrapped around it. They took off several pieces of rope and then worked to remove the prop to clean out the rest of the debris. However, they couldn’t figure out how to get the prop off and the darkness caused them to postpone further work until the morning. During sunset Ezi and Theo went swimming and Theo discovered that his mask, which had worked perfectly only an hour before had developed a sizable leak.
Everyone took turns taking watch and were grateful for the beautiful stars that shone throughout the night. I was glad I had the first watch from 8:30-11pm. The stars twinkled above and the fireworks shows were exciting.