Thursday morning we left Shell Key and continued up the ICW through the waters of Florida Bay bearing names as colorful as the greens and blues of the waters themselves: Cotton Key Basin, Buttonwood Sound, Tarpon Basin, Blackwater Sound, Barnes Sound, Little Card Sound, and, finally, Card Sound. We skirted the boundary of Everglades National Park, which extends way down into Florida Bay until we reached Jewfish Creek, where the NP boundary turned north to run parallel to US 1. We traversed the sometimes narrow passes and cuts: Steamboat Channel, Cowpens Cut, Ramshorn Cut, Baker Cut, Grouper Creek, Dusenbury Creek and Jewfish Creek. At the north end of Card Sound, within sight of Biscayne Bay, we dropped our anchor. The wind was moderate, but forecast to calm and change direction, but instead intensified, and our anchor
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