Mooring Ball Life

Life on the Fort Myers Beach mooring balls is remarkably busy and very entertaining. This picture, taken from the Pier, shows lots of people on the beach, but not nearly as busy as the last time we were here during spring break several years ago. We enjoyed walking on this lovely beach and have been up and down in both directions. The open lot in the middle is a controversial piece of property, once valued at over $30 million, but now heading for auction and might fetch $6 million at the most. It's at the center of the tourist action, and many feel the town should try to acquire it.

When we take the dinghy in each day, we pass many cruising boats, some trawlers, but the majority are sailboats. Most of the people on the mooring balls are long term cruisers, some staying here for the winter and others just stopping off for a break before their next adventure. The dinghy dock is located very near the bridge you take to get to Fort Myers Beach by car. We were advised to lock up the dinghy here since a couple of dinghys that were left unlocked overnight were stolen. This is also where we fill up the water jugs each day to keep our water tank full.

The boat pictured below, Freddy Freddy, is one of the most interesting vessels we've seen. Freddy Freddy's owners built her (and her equally unique dinghy) themselves and have been cruising for 5 years, including a Great Loop completion.

I've been trying all week to get a good picture of the mooring field. Here is the East Mooring Field, the one we are in, late in the afternoon, looking at the bow of Shingebiss on the left side of the picture.

Here is a sunset taken from our boat, looking toward the West Mooring Field, closer to the dinghy dock. Although we have a longer ride to the dock, it's very quiet out here at night, so we've decided we like it.

Last night, one of the boating couples organized a shrimp and oyster feed for us all. We ate spicy Vietnamese salad and shucked raw oysters. I ate one raw oyster, just for the experience, but don't plan on eating any more. Steve tried his hand at shucking. The man in the peach shirt was the one who organized the party.

Meanwhile the huge head on shrimp were marinating in garlic and olive oil and the coals were heating on two grills. We skewered the shrimp and this gal joyfully tended the grills for a couple of hours.

Someone cooked up a special sauce that enhanced the shrimp even more and everyone ate until they were stuffed. It was great fun to meet all the cruisers, hear their stories, and experience the comraderie. Yesterdays temperature was in the high 70's and Steve was happily driving the dinghy back to the boat after dark in a teeshirt and shorts.

We think we are finally in the warm weather for good, but we've learned to expect any kind of weather to happen at any given time or location. On Sunday, we are having Gale and Maureen (boat Blue Heron) over to watch the Vikings/Cowboys game on our new TV. Reception with rabbit ears is quite astonishing. Plans are to leave here in a few days for the cruise to Marathon. Steve has 9 stops picked out for us along that route. We've decided that he is in charge of planning for the future, I'm in charge of documenting the past, and we're both trying to live in the present !!!