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Thursday, January 12, 2006 Around 1:00 PM we reached the Boca inlet to Charlotte Harbor and were soon attempting to nudge ourselves through Pelican Pass into the anchorage beyond, where we could see several boats already. It was no good, no good. I reversed just as we ran aground. Our next choice was the Punta Blanca anchorage on the other side of Pelican Bay. At least one guidebook warned that we wouldn't make it, but as the legends had said, there was a narrow channel of six to eight feet of water all the way around the point, just 50 feet or less from the mangrove beach. It was a very isolated, protected anchorage. We dropped bow and stern anchors to hold us in the deep water and launched the Nemo for a trip to Cayo Costa Island. Florida owns and protects 2,400 acres of this island, which has access only by boat. We caught a ride with on a tram--actually just a pickup pulling a trailer--over the sand road to the beach, which was very different from the white sand beaches we'd seem in the Panhandle. The sand here was coarse and full of shells (if there is anything else in it). We walked north about a half mile and then started back on one of the interior trails, enjoying the variety of flowers and plants and keeping our eyes open for wild pigs. Perhaps I should have kept my eyes open for the correct trail, because just as we were expecting to arrive back at the dock, we popped out on the shore of the wrong side of the island, a mile from the dock. Steve Brown (a former Sale Creek sailor) called just then on the cell phone and I'm afraid I probably sounded as disoriented as I felt. Walking quickly now in a race with darkness, I was staring at the map but Laura spotted a wild pig crossing the trail. We knew then that whether we made it out alive or not, the expedition had been a success. (For the record, we did eventually reach the docks, regain the Nemo, and return to the mother ship just as the sun set.)
Today we embarked on the next leg of the trip, down the ICW to Fort Myers Beach. It was another calm day in the Gulf, but the ICW route looked shorter and has just one bridge (Sanibel Island at Fort Myers). The 25 mile trip was easy but required some attention due to a constant parade of boats of all sizes. I have never seen so many boats in one day in my life. The narrow channel looked like an Interstate, except that occasionally you'd meet a driver coming in your lane. Again, there were lots of dolphins--I think I saw two dozen today. Tonight we're in the opposite of our Punta Blanca anchorage, the Matanza (Ft. Myers Beach) mooring field, which is $13/night, payable to Salty Sam's Marina. They wanted to see our Coast Guard documentation and the declarations page of our insurance policy, which of course I didn't have with me when I dingied in, but they took my Tennessee registration and a phoned request to IMS (our insurers) to fax the documents. This is a large mooring field with room for around 100 boats, with maybe 40 here now. We dinghied over to the underside of the fixed bridge and tied the dingy off to the short barnacled wall there, using an anchor to hold it off while we were gone. Someday, they promise, Fort Myers will put a dingy dock under the bridge, but for now our solution was fine. I locked the dingy, advisable according to one of the guidebooks. In my book, any place that publishes a handout for cruisers is by definition a cruiser-friendly place. We walked the beach around the pier for a while, watched the sunset, played on a nice playground--all our usual activities.
Saturday, January 14, 2006 Ft. Myers Beach seems to be a deeply divided community. There are apparently a growing number of residents are trying to encourage the tourists to go elsewhere. They've even tried to halt the trolley buses that carry people down the main tourist strip along the beach, arguing that the tourists should drive their own cars and have to sit in traffic like the residents! You don't see that kind of brilliant logic often, at least outside of the voting booth. Fortunately, the town is still boater-friendly (so long as you don't speed through the no wake zones).
Monday, January 16, 2006 Around 8:00 AM today we attempted to leave the mooring field at low tide and ran aground, but eventually found a way out. I had a route on the chartplotter to take us all the way to Everglades City, but we would have had to start before the sun came up to get there before dark. After about 20 easy miles in the Gulf we came in Gordon Pass and cruised two or three miles into Naples. The mooring field was still there so far as we could see, but empty (later I saw on www.cruisingguide.com that the dingy dock and mooring field had been closed, but no reasons were given). Still, this part of Naples was interesting. There isn't a home on the Naples canals that would sell for less than two or three million dollars. Obviously, this part of town doesn't depend on tourists or cruisers. There are no high-rise condos, either. Clearly, those who are so unhappy in Ft. Myers should move down here. We're anchored in a canal near the pass, surrounded by homes that would be beautiful if they weren't so needlessly gigantic. It's a long day tomorrow to Everglades City, 45 miles in the Gulf and six more into town. I wish we could have made it today because the seas will be higher tomorrow. The other rub is that we may not be able to get out of this canal tomorrow morning because it will be low tide unless we leave very, very early.
Wednesday, January 18 As the sun came up were off Marco Island where a solid wall of high rise condos stand like a fort, with almost nothing but mangroves and the open Gulf to the south. There are just a few settlements and a lot of wilderness remaining on the west coast from here down to the Keys. The wind was around 20 knots not quite on the nose, and with each big wave our speed dropped until we couldn't maintain five knots. I put up the mainsail and that did the trick, adding another knot of boat speed while smoothing the ride. When Annie came up in the cockpit a while later we were a few miles off the treacherous Romano Shoals, where hapless mariners can find just a foot of water despite being miles offshore. I had courses plotted both on paper and the chartplotter to take us well around this obstacle, and found myself wanting to go even further. Around 10:00 AM we were safely past Romano and turned sharply back to the east north-east and the Ten Thousand Islands. Our course led us directly to Indian Key, and we were officially in the Everglades. We threaded our way down the narrow channel six miles to Everglades City, passing fishing boats and kayak and boat tours full of people who had paid to see the same sights we were enjoying for free (if you don't count the expense of buying and cruising a boat, that is). We'd called ahead to Steve Stanforth of Living Well and he was there to guide us in and help us raft up to his boat. A few minutes later we'd met Richard, the ever-gracious owner of the facility and had been talked into taking his golf cart for a tour of town. What a great, friendly place! Although the real estate is no cheaper, the houses here are charming in their normal sizes and old-fashioned styles. In most parts of town you can imagine that Everglades City has looked about the same for the past 40 or 50 years. Today we slept in, had lunch right here at the cafe just down the dock, and worked on some boat projects. Annie did laundry and sewed up a cover for the outboard motor on the Nemo while I finally got around to taking apart the port chainplate. This item had been on the "to-do" list for a long time since the chainplate dripped occasionally during heavy downpours, but we discovered that the open Gulf, where water is often sloshing back and forth on deck, produces far more dramatic results. We'll remove any wet core, dry it all out, and epoxy the whole area so that any future leaks won't be a real threat. We figure we'll be here at least a couple more days before heading south another 40 miles to anchor at Little Shark River, then jump down another 40 miles or so to the Keys.
Sunday, January 22 Down here, as Steve's friend Lee Marteeny says, things are a little different. We've enjoyed the convenience of being rafted up here at City Seafood, and of course the company of Steve and Gloria and the residents of Everglades City. How long have we been here? I've lost track. The crab boats crank up and head out around 3:30 AM each morning, returning 14 hours later. Airboats are constantly idling past us--there are at least five outfits to that will take you for a ride for around $30 a person, making airboats the biggest industry in town. Tour boats come by and sometimes mention the two sailboats tied up at the dock, although they always focus on Living Well (Annie and I have schemed about ways to make our boat more interesting). Although you don't see a lot of activity, real estate is a hot topic down here. A forty-year old remodeled two bedroom house will list for around $700,000. You can own a little strip of pavement to park your big RV for a mere $300,000, and you're really only getting half a year for that, since almost everyone leaves during the hot, bug-infested summer. Yesterday we launched the Nemo and circumnavigated Everglades City. I'd ridden Steve's bicycle down to the Ranger Station and gotten some advice of where we might explore. The two recommended options were to cross the bay over to Sandfly Island (Sandflies are another name for "no-see-ums," those most dreaded of insects), and Turner River. It looks like Turner River is an excellent canoe trip from U.S. 41 down to Chokoloskee Island, and I wanted to see if we could explore some of this in Nemo. While we never actually made it to Turner River--idle speed zones, shallow water, and a dingy that can't easily get up on plane with all three of us on board slowed us down--we did reach Chokoloskee where we ate some ice cream. We also explored one tiny creek where we were attacked by fiddler crabs. Of course I wanted to make a loop so we tested my theory that a certain canal would lead us back around to our starting point up the Barrons River. There was great celebration when in fact we did complete the grand circle and found ourselves back at City Seafood. Steve and Gloria borrowed a car and we made a Walmart run up to Naples, about a 30 minute drive. The boat is in good shape, the forecast is good for travel, and we'll probably move on sometime in the next day or so. Down here, it's hard to be exact about these kinds of things.
Tuesday, January 24 Annie says: This past week has been great. We've done some good visiting with our friends Steve and Gloria, a little sightseeing, a lot of boat chores and even more relaxing. We have even hung our hammock, much to Laura's delight. I sit on the deck in the mornings watching the pelicans and terns and then in the evening listening to the fish splash in the water. Of course, the weather is great. Warm and sunny with a slight breeze almost all the time. However, the blue water is calling and I think we will soon be departing (and Laura hasn't collected a sea shell in over a week). |