Sunday: We did not set an alarm for wake up today. After losing an hour sleep with the switch to Daylight Savings Time, we figured we would wake up around sunrise time – which was nearly 8:00. I woke up around 7:45 and checked the weather, and it said FOG. What?! I looked outside and didn’t see any. We weren’t too worried about starting way early today since we didn’t need to time tides or anything. We had about 60 miles to go, which would take us about 7 hours, and we would be hopping out into the Gulf once we got south of Sanibel Island. Our destination today was Marco Island. So – we got up, fixed some coffee, and I strolled around just a little. I got us checked out with the Harbormaster, and we cast off lines. Now was the challenge that Captain wasn’t looking forward to….. backing all the way out of this fairway. The fella on the boat behind us came over to wish us a safe voyage. Kenny was standing up top watching the wind and water and plotting our escape plan. The nice man told him “You’ve got this – I watched you come in. You know how to handle this boat.” Wow – how nice! Kenny said people need to quit telling him such nice things, or his head might pop. But the man was right – Kenny pulled her away from the wall and backed her all the way down the fairway past the line of four boats on each side of us…. like he was driving a bowling ball right down the gutter…. as straight as could be. Perfect! Then we headed out to the bay and back to the ICW. And guess what? It WAS foggy out there! The wind was blowing from shore to the sea, so we had no fog at the seashore, but the bay did. Hmmmm – weird. It wasn’t bad – we’ve been in way worse. We could see pretty well, and the radar worked, so we were in good shape.
The fog didn’t last long, and we were on pretty familiar water. After about 2 hours, we were moving past the south end of Sanibel Island and out into the open Gulf. The water wasn’t bad! There were a lot of boats out and about, since this was Sunday, so most of our wave action was from other boats.
The water was beautiful! After we got a ways south of Ft Myers Beach area, there were just a few boats and easy cruising. We cranked up some Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney, and enjoyed the tropical day at sea. Today was warmer than yesterday, so short sleeves were perfect.
By about 3:00, we were at Capri Pass/Marco Bay – the entrance to Marco Island. This scene made me smile – all these weekend warriors out enjoying some sand-spit time!
We’ve only been to Marco Island one other time, and we stayed at the Marco Island Marina/Yacht Club that time. I found us a place a little closer to the Gulf this time, at the Marina at Factory Bay. They put us on a T-dock, which was easy schmeazy – we just pulled over from the channel and ta-da! Captain gets us right up to the dock, so I almost always just hand the lines to the dockmaster – no more throwing lines. The dockmaster was very complimentary at how well we came in, in spite of wind and current. Captain does make it look easy.
We planned to east on the boat tonight, but thought we’d go explore a bit. There isn’t much in this little area, and really not much open on Sunday. We saw the Snook Inn, with it’s tiki hut and blue umbrellas as we approached the marina, so thought we should go check it out. Smaller boats can just pull right up to the dock!
That was fun- we just got a couple of drinks from the bar, and went upstairs to a deck overlooking the river. We enjoyed watching dolphins, boats, and jet skis. There was a whole gang of jet skis! I counted eleven of them as they departed like they were on a rally together!
The restaurant was very busy – it would have taken us at least an hour for the first available table. We headed back to the boat for some yummy French Dip sandwiches and showers. Tomorrow will be a long day – it is 100 miles to Marathon from here. We’ll get up before the sun and make our way back out to the Gulf in the dark. Good thing we have a rabbit trail on the Garmin to follow! We will cruise most of the day at just 9 mph, so we have a good 11 hour day. We could bump it up to 20mph which doubles our speed and cuts time in half…. so we may save an hour or two by going fast for a little while. We’ll see. The weather and water should be calmer tomorrow than it was today… seas should be about one foot. Wind less than 10mph – starting out from the east in the morning, and from the west by late afternoon. So says the weather survey.