Anchoring in Book Key Harbor

Boot Key Harbor is a great place to stay for a day or several months in the winter.

This is where we have spent the winter down in the Florida Keys.

With it’s 360 deg. protection from storms and a well laid out mooring field the harbor is a very safe place to stay. It wasn’t always like this, many years ago this harbor was the “wild west” of the keys. Before the city took over governance of the harbor and installed moorings it was a wide open place to anchor with many of the anchored boats being the "3-D's"... ‘drugs,  drunks & derelicts’ who occuping the harbor (think the 70’s generation). The result of this “freedom” is a harbor bottom that was littered with trash and sunken boats. Over the years, most of the wrecks have been cleaned up but there are still a few hiding on the bottom and our friends found one the other day.



The Yellow is the anchorage and the Red dot is where the houseboat is on the bottom.

Good friends of ours live on “Waves of Grace” (a Catalina 42) and they had anchored a short distance from us only, just by the ‘luck of the draw’ they happened to drop their anchor right into an old house boat that is on the bottom. After a couple of strong cold fronts that came roaring thru the area their anchor chain had “sawn” threw the cabin top of the house boat, trapping their anchor inside. A diver was called in.

After half of an hour up came a part of the houseboat.

After a half-an-hour of work Walt was able to raise their anchor only to find that a chunk of the houseboat had come up with the anchor! After several more tries, the piece was knocked loose and the anchor came up with a minimum of debris stuck to it and they moved to a mooring. All in all, an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

 

So, if your anchor is stuck, give diver Chris a call!