Here is a write up I just found.
Out Adams Cut at key Largo to the ocean and down on the Ocean side to Key West
The Reef (Hawk Channel) that go out from the Keys on the east side protect the water so it's alway usaully at most 2 -4's all the way to Key West
As someone said above - buy some charts and you'll see..
Take the "Route 1 of the Atlantic," Hawks Channel, a well-marked waterway 11-16 feet deep, that follows the reef from Miami to Key West. If you charter a boat in Miami, you can pick and choose among spacious trawlers, luxurious motor yachts, or swift catamarans. Just remember to get one with a shallow draft (4-1/2 feet or less) -- the Keys' skinny waters don't take kindly to deep-keeled boats.
Key Largo, the first island south of the Florida mainland, is 40 miles and 40 years away from Miami, and the tropical scenes just get better the further along the 105 miles you travel to Key West. Your trip takes you through much of the 2,800-square-mile Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
The following is one suggested itinerary:
Day 1: Miami to Key Largo
Get your boat and head to Key Largo, where diving and snorkeling reign. Grab a mooring buoy for $15 a night at John Pennekamp, the nation's first underwater park, and take a look at what lies beneath. Some 800,000 divers a year come to Key Largo, so be sure to keep a lookout for red and white "diver down" flags as you're traveling.
John Pennekamp State Park abuts the Key Largo Marine Sanctuary wherein lies one of the most famous dive sites in the world, "Christ of the Deep." This nine-foot, 4,000-pound bronze statue, a replica of one off the coast of Italy, has been the site of many an underwater wedding. Even better, if the happy couple hasn't dived into the depths, they can honeymoon at the nearby Jules Verne, the world's only underwater hotel.
Besides the reef, the Keys are full of accidental and manmade shipwrecks to dive on. In the past 20 years, 23 artificial reefs have been created by scuttling ships ranging from retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters to an 80-ton wooden shrimp boat.
Day 2: Key Largo to Islamorada
Billed as the "sportsfishing capital of the world," Islamorada is an angler's paradise. Go offshore in the morning and try your luck with the dolphin, sailfish and marlin. In the afternoon, hire a small boat and guide (ask local tackle shops for recommendations) and head into the "back country" -- the shallow waters and mangrove-strewn islands of Florida Bay -- for delicious snapper, permit and snook. Or try your luck at bonefishing and attempt to land one of these elusive, transparent creatures in 18 inches of water from a specially built "flats" boat.
For a less taxing way to connect with our finned friends, head over to Robbie's restaurant to feed the rotund tarpons who live under their docks, and try their special "grits and grunts" for breakfast. Tie up at Smuggler's Cove Marina and Resort, where a view of the sunset shows why "Islamorada" means "purple island" in Spanish.
Day 3: Islamorada to Middle Keys
No one ever tires of watching dolphins play in a boat's bow wave. The Keys have several varieties of the friendly mammals. To play with them, there are five dolphin centers in the Keys. At the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, just a few miles north of Marathon, a half-day "Dolphin Encounter" lets you socialize and swim with these extraordinary mammals.
Hawk's Cay Marina, also a full-service resort for landlubbers, has a dolphin program geared just for the shorter species among us. Even if you don't have kids, this is a great place to tie up for the night. To anchor out, try Marathon's Boot Key Harbor, a refuge for cruisers and live-aboards in the Keys for decades, which now has new moorings. Leaving Marathon, you'll see the world's longest segmented bridge, the Seven Mile Bridge, over Moser Channel. Stop by Pigeon Key, a five-acre parcel that once housed more than 400 railroad, bridge and highway workers. Today it's on the National Register of Historic Places with a museum and marine research facilities.
Day 4: Middle Keys to Lower Keys
Some of the 30 inhabited Keys are more built up than others. The Lower Keys fall in the "others" category, with two National Wildlife Refuges (Blue Heron and Key Deer), a state park and a sprinkling of New Age shops.
There's a world-class resort at Little Palm Island where couples pay $800 per-night for the "cheap" rooms on this tranquil, beautiful island that looks more like the South Pacific than South Florida. For $350 per-night (not counting the 25% BoatU.S. discount) there are 14 slips at the resort's marina, and amenities include kayaks, windsurfers and launch service to and from the island (not that you'll want to leave).
Just three miles away is Looe Key, a gorgeous shallow reef full of sponges, soft corals and vibrant elkhorn and staghorn coral thickets, named after the HMS Looe, which hit it in 1744. (During the 1700s and 1800s, the Keys averaged almost a shipwreck a year.) Each July, it's the site of the Keys' Underwater Music Festival, where the Snorkeling Elvises and the Seapremes -- acts found nowhere else on Earth -- perform.
Days 5-7: Key West
Although it's only two-by-four miles in area, Key West is overflowing with history -- and histrionics. Boasts its Tourism Development Council: "Key West has been a mecca for dropouts, millionaires and tourists ... who were living the philosophy of 'Let It Be' well before the Beatles."
Inhabited for 4,000 years by the ancestors of today's Seminole Indians, Key West was first settled by outsiders in 1820, and by 1860 it was the wealthiest city in the nation. Its richest inhabitants earned their money salvaging ships that hit the reefs. A few purportedly even lit their lanterns in the wrong places, deliberately drawing the ships to their doom. In a "bad news, good news" move, officials installed lighthouses and warning buoys on the reefs in the 1880s, thus putting an end to some of the shadier dealings and sky-high earnings.
