Finally - The Dry Tortugas!

Our engine behaved enough for Utopia to make it to the Dry Tortugas where we enjoyed this remote national park. However, our engine issues ended up dominating part of our visit...

Marathon to Dry Tortugas

Friday, February 27 – Saturday, February 28, 2026

131 Miles | 114 Nautical Miles | 25 hours

Our time in Marathon was longer than anticipated and was spent chasing various problems on Utopia. Then our departure was further delayed due to the alternator belt misalignment on our attempt to leave on Thursday, February 26. After more alternator belt adjustments, and one more false start, we began our passage towards the Dry Tortugas Friday morning.

For the first few hours of the passage, we checked the alternator belt every 15 minutes, then gradually increased the internval to once an hour by the time our evening shift at the helm began and continued until we set anchor the next day.

Very light wind conditions on the way to the Dry Tortugas.

Forecasts indicated that we would have a nice sail all the way to the Dry Tortugas with winds out of the S or SE. We decided to take a route on the north side of the keys for smoother seas. It turned out that the winds were much lighter than anticipated, and we ended up motorsailing the whole way. At least our alternator belt was behaving.

By nightfall the crab pots thinned out enough for us to feel a little better about motoring past the random pot. We agreed that if one fouled our prop at night, we would just attempt to sail or drift around until we had some sunlight to dive the prop. Luckily the crab pots behaved as well.

Around 8:30 a.m. we entered the Southeast Channel into the Dry Tortugas National Park while two sea planes flew overhead on a decent. About an hour later we had set anchor on the south side of Garden Key, in front of Fort Jefferson with three other boats. 

Utopia (middle) anchored in the southeast harbor of Garden Key.

Dry Tortugas National Park

Arrival Day: Saturday, February 28

We dinghied to shore to check in with the park rangers, where we learned that boaters no longer needed to check in, nor pay a separate boat permit fee. We just needed to pay the national park’s entrance fee which is done online (same with Cumberland Island).  

Since we had been aboard Utopia since Thursday morning, we took a little stroll into the fort but soon realized that we needed sleep more than anything and headed back to the boat.

After napping we refreshed ourselves with a swim. It was so nice to jump into the beautiful water and swim around Utopia. It has been a long time since we have been able to do that.

With the resting out of the way, we had a big decision to make:

Take the first weather window to Belize or wait for the next window?

Since this was to be our longest passage to date, we decided to hire a weather routing service to aid in the decision of when to make the jump to Belize. Reports indicated that the next opportunity to make the crossing would be on Monday with the next window not opening up for another week. The Monday opening would only give us only one full day in the Dry Tortugas and we just were not ready to leave this beautiful, remote place yet. We decided to gamble and wait for another weather window.

Sunday - Wednesday

The Dry Tortugas National Park is really a gem situated in a very remote location.

Fort Jefferson is the prominent feature of Dry Tortugas and is located on Garden Key. It is a giant brick fort where the public can roam most of structure. The views are incredible from the top.

The next prominent feature may be the birds of Bush Key. Sooty terns are numerous and quite vocal creating a constant cacophony for the anchorage. Among them is the brown noddy and the magnificent frigatebird. We also saw gulls, plovers, other little birds, yellow topped night heron, a raptor of some sort, a stork-like bird along with what looks like what I call a cow bird. I should take the time to learn to better identify birds.

Daily ferry & sea planes provide transportation to visitors to the island. Most stay for the day, but a few will stay in the primitive campground on Garden Key.

When not wandering Garden & Bush Key, swimming & snorkeling make great past-times. The water around Utopia is crystal clear and several fish like to hang out under her keel. There is a giant fish, probably a goliath grouper that visited the shade under our boat. From Garden Key, one can snorkel along the moat wall where old debris and the wall itself create a habitat for coral and fish. We selected the downwind (the lee-side) of the fort to snorkel. There are some man-o-wars around so some caution should be exercised.

Dinghy exploration is another fun way to see the area. It is best with light wind and sunny conditions where you can easily see the reefs. Since it is rather remote, and there are not many cruisers here, we chose to stay withing a mile of the anchorage. However, if we got to know some of the other cruisers, we would have been open to making the three-mile, open water crossing to Loggerhead Key.

Passage Planning & Changes

Just one more photo of us trying to fix our alignment issue...

After communicating back and forth with the routing service, we had decided to depart for Belize on Wednesday. So, Tuesday morning, we fired up the engine to double check the status of the alternator belt and ended up spending the entire day working on the engine. By late afternoon it was apparent that we may have bigger issues with our alternator (certainly the smoke we saw coming out of it is not a good sign) and need to delay our trip south by several weeks.

Wednesday morning, we continued to mess around with the alternator belt alignment and scrambled around to find a mechanic we could sail to. Eventually we were able to start up the engine without the belt jumping off the crank pulley and found someone to look at our system in Fort Myers Beach.

The plan is to leave the Dry Tortugas tomorrow morning (Thursday) and aim to arrive at Matanzas Pass during slack tide the following morning (Friday).

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