Ten Thousand Islands

We had a great time watching the Vikings beat up on the Cowboys with friends Gale and Maureen. Since they next have to take on the Saints, we planned a route to Marathon that would get us there by Sunday, with a couple of extra days built in, just in case. We topped off the fuel tanks at Ballard Oil in Fort Myers Beach Monday morning. At $2.71/gallon, much cheaper than the Keys and will get us into April. It was a beautiful day when we exited Matanzas for a short "outside" run, about 4 miles offshore, to Naples. The swells were pretty big, and it was a "hang onto the boat with one hand" cruise. Downtown Naples seen from the Gulf.

Gordon Pass brought us into the residential section of Naples. The homes here are larger and more luxurious than any we've seen. This is an average one in the neighborhood we transitted. The canals were wide, well marked and full of boating activity.

We turned into the "old ICW" which runs from Naples to just south of Marco Island. This narrow, undeveloped stretch was lined with mangroves and busy with boaters, but very scenic.

We found a cozy little anchorage off the waterway between Little Marco Island and Keewaden Island. Keewaden is a narrow barrier island where there are docks on the inside and Gulf Beach on the outside. The docks appear to have been put in by a developer and have "land for sale" signs, but only one had a home built on it. The next morning we took the dinghy down to the south end of Keewaden and walked across to one of the most gorgeous beaches we have seen. There were piles of shells and we found a couple to add to our collection along with 3 good sized perfect sand dollars.

The beach was deserted, but I would imagine it's quite busy on weekends being located between Naples and Marco Island. Can you see the condo's of Marco Island in the background of this picture?

Back on the old ICW, we began to see lots of Osprey nests on the channel markers. We could hear the babies chirping in some of them.

Can you see the second bird down in the nest in this one?

We wiggled our way through Marco Island with some shallow water and tricky markings and exited the old ICW for the last time at Coon Pass.

After Marco Island, we saw no more development and were in the Ten Thousand Islands, all covered with mangroves with small beaches on some of the shores. A dolphin with a baby swam with us for a short while.

Our second anchorage on the five day plan to Marathon is at Russell Pass. It's deserted, very dark and quiet at night. Here's this morning's view from the boat out into the Gulf, where we will head out soon for the next leg of the journey.

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 !!!

Fort Myers Beach

Steve made chili for our last night at the Legacy Harbour Marina and we had Kay & Bob and Libby & Clark for dinner on our boat, proving you can have dinner for 6 on a 34' Mainship. We had such a great time with them at Legacy, but the weather was warming up so it was time to head out. Libby and Kay came out to "conch us out" of the harbor. It had been too cold for our entire stay for them to conch the sun down, which is their usual tradition. Here they are on the dock holding their conch shells.

and here they are conching us out as we actually leave our slip at Legacy.
I took a very short (8 second) video of their warm up session if you want to hear the actual sounds they produce, it'll be at the end of this post.

We had a very pleasant sunny cruise to the Fort Myers Beach Mooring Field where we plan to stay about a week. We passed under the Sanibel Island Causeway where the highrises of Fort Myers Beach can be seen in the background under the bridge.

A little closer to the beach, we turned toward the beach and followed the markers into Matanzas Pass, a busy harbor between Estero and San Carlos Islands.

The harbor is filled with marinas, a USCG station, shrimp boats, dockside condo's and restaurants and a city run mooring field right in the middle of it all. For $13/day, you can tie to one of the 70 mooring balls, get a pumpout whenever you need one from the mobile pump out boat and dinghy into the Matanzas Inn dinghy dock to use the showers, laundry, get water, or leave your dinghy for the day to explore the fun town and beach.

The mooring balls allow many more boats to use an anchorage than if they all had their own anchor down. They are very popular in areas that have coral reefs too because anchoring at random destroys the coral, but the mooring balls are permanently screwed into the bottom of the sea allowing the reefs to continue to grow. Steve nudged the boat up to the ball and I reached down from the bow with the boat hook to grab the "pennant", a 5-10' line attached to the ball to which you tie your own line, and then cleat your line off. Alas, there was no pennant on this one, nor any of the ones I could see. So I pulled the huge ball up and out of the water with the boat hook and Steve leaned over and threaded our line through the eye on top of the ball. Whew, those things are heavy.....

Today we took the dinghy in to Moss Marine to visit looper friends Tom and Diann (boat Noah Genda). We enjoyed getting caught up on their cruising adventures since the last time we had seen them and looking at charts for the best route to the Keys. Steve and I walked to the center of town and hopped on the Beach Trolley for a round trip tour through Fort Myers Beach, Lovers Key, and Bonita Shores. It was a good way to get a quick look at the resorts, houses, beaches and bays in this popular area. During our dinghy ride back to the boat, Steve took us in for a close up look at the shrimp boat fleet.

Fort Myers Beach is a funky happenin' touristy kinda place with a little something for everyone so we expect to spend the next couple of days doing a little more exploring and beach walking.

Legacy Harbour Marina, Fort Myers

Cayo Costa State Park was the last anchorage on our "8 days without a marina", a new Shingebiss record. A short dinghy ride to the State Park dock and a 3/4 mile hike leads to the Gulf beach.

There is a tram (trailer with seats pulled by pickup truck) that you can ride, but we opted for the walk. We had run aground for the first time earlier in the day, toward the edge of, but still in, the channel. We were going at cruising speed, so could not motor off. A nice man with his son in a 20' fishing boat pulled us off. We are appreciating our well protected prop and shallow 3' draft more and more as we hear about (and experience) the "skinny water" of Florida. Pelican Bay, the huge anchorage at Cayo Costa, had some shallow water as well, and we touched bottom once as we felt our way into the anchorage. Cayo Costa is a beautiful park with hiking trails, campgrounds and beach. It's just north of well known islands Captiva and Sanibel, but is only accessible by water. A ferry brings folks out from Fort Meyers to hunt shells, hike and camp.

Except for the one day of rain, we had enjoyed good weather during this entire cruising stretch, but that changed the following morning and we had a chilly, windy run into Fort Myers. Right off the intercoastal, we saw this private party island. Tiny, yet had all they needed.

The intercoastal waterway ends at Fort Myers where we turned up the Caloosahatchee River, which is part of the Okeechobee Waterway. Some loopers take this shortcut to the east (Atlantic) coast of Florida, but most seem to take the longer route through the Keys. We went 17 miles up the Caloosahatchee to Legacy Harbour Marina (http://www.legacyharbourmarina.com/) to meet fellow Minnesota/Mississippi River boaters Kay and Bob who cruise Loriel down here every other year in the fall and then back up in the spring. They are not loopers, but call themselves yoyos. They've chosen a great winter home at Legacy Marina, with huge floating concrete docks, 2 blocks from downtown, 2 blocks from Publix and all the other amenities that we've learned to appreciate so much. Here's the marina as we approached.

Although it's right on the main river channel, it's a "minimum wake" zone and has a large floating breakwater. Lots of beautiful, well maintained boats are here occupied by yoyos, loopers, snowbirds, and every other sort of adventurous cruiser. Some boaters here have one boat here and another up in the Great Lakes for the summer !!

Bob and Kay had not yet returned from their Christmas in Minnesota, so we were welcomed by their cruising pals Clark and Libby, who yoyo Kindred Spirit from Lake Michigan. We are docked right by them both, right behind the floating breakwater. We've got a long walk to the laundry and showers, but a great view of the river and the sunsets. We've been on a whirlwind schedule since we arrived, including nightly social hours, shopping (we bought a TV !!!), and dinner with Ray and Delila (Sundancer, the converted shrimp boat) who we had met at Port St. Joe.

We spent a morning at the Winter Estates of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, who were best friends and neighbors. It's a great tour of the restored homes and remarkable gardens and trees. Mr. Edison spent his later years trying to find a better plant from which to extract rubber and had a laboratory on the grounds as well. This banyan tree was only 4 feet high when planted and is now the largest in the continental US covering almost an acre of ground. It's all the same tree !!!

Yesterday, Kay and Bob took us to Manatee Park, where the warm waters from the nearby power plant attract the manatees. There were at least a hundred of them clustered here and even more people clustered on the railings along the shore oohing and awing whenever one would raise their nose to breath.

They are very camera shy, so you'll have to take our word for it that it was very cool to see them and that every little bump in the photo below is indeed an actual manatee.

Last night we strolled downtown to have dinner at the French Connection. Bob and Kay at the wall, then Clark and Libby, then Steve and me. They've been fabulous "harbor hosts" and we've really enjoyed sharing tales of the rivers and the high seas.

As always seems to be the case, the cold weather has caught up with us again, so our plans are to head south in a couple of days. Our next big destination is Marathon; it's about midway down the Keys and has the best natural harbor in the Keys, filled with winter cruisers and reputed to be lots of fun. After much deliberation (and budget planning), we found a marina there with a slip available and reserved it for a month starting January 27. Here's the website of where we will be if you want to take a look. http://www.keysmarinamarathon.com/ We have a few weeks of travel time to get there, so Steve is busy planning the routes and the stops along the way. Kay has just brought us the keys to their car and we're off to Walmart for provisioning.

Stump Pass, Englewood

A mere 2.5 miles from our last anchorage, Stump Pass is our new favorite anchorage. This image is from a website describing Florida anchorages. At the bottom is the ICW, the Gulf at the top and we are anchored where the dotted line turns to the left.

We dinghy'd across the pass to the beach on the right to search for shark's teeth. We'd heard they wash up on this beach and we (ie. Steve mostly) found 15 of them. Lots of shells found here too.

It looked like a great place to view a sunset over the Gulf, so we returned later in the afternoon. Photos are inadequate to see the full beauty so I took a one minute 360 degree video, which I'm going to upload at the end of this blog.

The full blue moon over our anchorage was beautiful.

At the end of a perfect day on the Loop, what could be better than a nice hot shower? Unfortunately, one of the water hoses leading to the nice hot shower had a slight aneurysm that decided to rupture right in the middle of the nice hot shower. I had to rinse with water heated up on the stove and a coffee cup. Have you heard the definitions of extended cruising as "Fixing your boat in exotic places"? Dunno if Stump Pass qualifies as exotic, but the next day Steve began pulling hoses out of the bilge to replace the ruptured section. Crucial sections were tie wrapped and screwed to the bulkhead beneath the dashboard. Steve could not get to them, so I donned my headlamp and went in. I had to lie down next to the engine to cut the ties and toss out the bad sections. Oh, it's good to be useful.

Next challenge, find new hose. After calling 3 nearby marinas and being told they don't have boat parts (?), we found an Ace Hardware in Englewood that appeared to be near the Gulf. The internet is essential during these missions. They had the hose and off we went in the dinghy. We parked at a dock for one of those dry storage marinas and found the Ace right across the street. They had a wonderful marine section. We got our hose plus a fishing net (in case we have to rescue Lucy), a new flag pole for the AGLCA flag, a floating key chain for the boat door key (duh!), and 2 collapsible 5 gallon water jugs, which we promptly filled at the dry storage place. Holding only 40 gallons of fresh water is an inadequacy of our boat, but we've not wanted to carry extra jugs. We've managed so far by filling up at every opportunity, but we are on an extended anchoring binge, and had spilled a few gallons into the bilge when the hose broke, so thought we'd give it a try. Did you know that a gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds? Those extra 83 pounds in the dinghy made it impossible to get up on a plane for the return trip with our little 9.9 hp motor. After a slow ride back, Steve had the water system back up and running within the hour.

Today is New Years Day, and it was raining off and on for most of the day, so we stayed put and have managed to entertain ourselves. Steve got chewed up by sand fleas on the beach. Benadryl capsules are the only thing keeping him from scratching like a madman, so he's pretty much joined Lucy in an all day nap.

The rain has stopped, so we'll stay here tonight and move on tomorrow for more adventures in 2010. Hope everyone had a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year !!

Boat Bummin' on the Gulf Coast

Tampa Bay was the first body of water we crossed after leaving Gulfport Marina the day after Christmas. The water was calm and the air was warm. This is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge (interstate 275), we are passing on the gulf side of it.

As soon as we got south of Tampa Bay it seemed like the Florida boating season had resumed. The ICW is quite narrow in spots and occasionally we see 40-50 foot cruisers coming at us or, worse, coming behind to pass us. One group of 5 passed us in a narrow section, the first two did not slow down at all and did we ever rock !! No damage, but it slid the couch out 2 feet from the wall. The last 3 must have seen us rock because they slowed down.

We anchored at the north end of Longboat Key. A dinghy ride through the pass took us to this deserted beach (called Beercan Beach), only accessible by boat. A "pass" is a deep water "pass through" between two barrier islands connecting the Gulf to the ICW. This beach has a desolate look about it, especially in the clouds. Good shelling, I found an intact sand dollar.
There was a nice city dock to tie the dinghy to, so we next went walking through the village where we came across a flock of peacocks roaming about in a vacant lot. They were quite tolerant of the photography, but did not spread their feathers for us.

A half mile walk brought us across the island to Whitney Beach. It's just beach after beach in this part of Florida. We stayed anchored at Longboat for 2 nights and went back to Beercan Beach again the next day.

We dinghy'd across the pass to a county dock and county park (and another beach), where I got this shot of a Brown Pelican. This is the Florida State Bird. They dive bomb the water for fish from as high as 50 feet making a big splash, it's fun to watch them in action.

We left early the next morning, here's a picture of the anchorage as we left.

We crossed Sarasota Bay, with the city of Sarasota on the mainland at the south end. Beautiful bridge and the city is alledged to have a great downtown, but we did not stop.

Our destination was Venice which turned out to be one of our favorites. This is the Venice Pass, leading out to the Gulf. The jetty on the left is one of their many city parks and gives a great view of the Gulf.

On the ICW side, Higel City Park has a free dock (one night limit). We arrived by noon, so we got a spot. We barely had the lines tied up before a very nice local man came by to talk and extole the virtues of Venice. Everyone likes the looks of the Shingebiss and wants to hear about our journey. We had a good workout on the 2.4 mile ride through a really neat downtown shopping area and to the Publix. This banyan tree is found on a wide boulevard/park on Venice Avenue. All of the vertical parts you see are air roots from the tree. Amazing.

We found a local produce stand and by the time we got done, the bike baskets were loaded to the max. After dinner, we walked to the Crow's Nest Marina Bar to watch the Vikings/Bears game, again meeting and talking with some locals.

The next morning we walked out to the jetty, had a bagel breakfast at Anita's Snack Shop, and watched the surfers. We pulled away from the City Dock at about noon. Here's the dock.

Another short cruise today, the prevailing winds this time of year are from the north and since we are heading south, we almost always have the wind at our backs, assuring us of a warm ride on the flybridge, even on the days where it stays in the 60's. We passed a very narrow barrier island today where the houses have the gulf beach in the front yard and their protected dock on the ICW in their backyard. What could be better? We are currently anchored at Englewood Beach. Took the dinghy for a ride and found NO city dock, so asked a local who had a small fishing marina if we could tie up for an hour. Walked over to, you guessed it, the beach. Tonight Steve captured this great sunset picture from the bow.


We're enjoying anchoring out, this part of Florida is made for it and the weather has been great.

Gulfport Municipal Marina

We enjoyed three beautiful warm sunny cruising days leading up to Christmas, but we are now experiencing the same storm system that is socking ya'll up there in Minnesota, although the Florida version is way gentler with some light rain and wind. Our first stop after leaving Caladesi State Park was Clearwater. Many loopers crossing the gulf opt to go another hour or two and land at the Clearwater Municipal Marina. Clearwater is upscale and well developed in contrast to the funky atmosphere of Tarpon Springs. The Marina has lots of busy charter fishing and tourboats along with restaurants, a hair salon, and an antique nautical shop. But it's also expensive at $2/foot/night. We pulled into Frenchie's dock instead, where you can tie up if you eat at Frenchie's Salt Water Cafe, which we did, but no one checks. Had an excellent Grouper Sandwich and walked through the Marina and down the wide clean beach which you can see in front of this huge hotel.

No overnight docking at Frenchie's however, so we pulled out and dropped the hook in Mandaley channel.

Leaving the next day, I tried this panoramic taken from the intercoastal looking at Bellaire Beach on the right, the Clearwater Pass Bridge in the Middle and Clearwater Beach on the right.

Clearwater Pass is where you would come in off the Gulf. As you can see, the coastline from here on south is at least 80% developed. Everyone wants waterfront and there's lots of it, with peninsulas, inlets, islands and canals in every direction. And lots and lots of boats, center console fishing boats from 15 feet to 30 feet are everywhere and many of the homes have elaborate docks and lifts with huge boats up on them. Here's a nice little neighborhood.

And here's something on a little bit larger scale, this one was still under construction.

The intercoastal flows through narrow parts and bays and sounds between the mainland and the barrier islands. Many of the bridges over the ICW have been replaced with tall spans so all the boats can get through, but the smaller communities still have lift bridges. They are mostly about 25' clearance, so the sailboats and bigger trawlers have to have them opened.

Our next anchorage is a unique one, McDonalds in Mediera Beach has a very nice floating dock with a Publix right next store. This is the view from where we anchored for 2 nights, enjoying McDonalds cuisine and taking advantage of the dock. Can you see the McDonalds flag flying at the end of the dock?

This was the first time we had gotten groceries by dinghy. There is a community of liveaboard sailors right around the corner from the McDonalds dock who dinghy over daily and lounge at the outdoor tables. There's even a small charter fishing boat that seems to be operating off the dock. One of the liveaboards told us where we could tie up the dinghy close to the town laundromat, so we did our laundry by dinghy as well. In the morning, this Great Egret was standing on our dinghy. Birds are everywhere and I purchased a laminated, accordion fold guide to Florida's Gulf Coast Birds so I can identify them. Most of them will let you get pretty close before they fly away.

We spent last night and tonight at the Gulfport Municipal Marina. We took the bikes into the downtown area yesterday (Christmas Eve) where there is a nice beach and lots of shops and restaurants. After dark, we biked the same route to look at the Christmas lights, followed by a dinner aboard of homemade pizza. Here's a Great Blue Heron that landed on our dock today. These guys are 4 feet tall !!

We went for a walk in a nearby nature preserve and this, I'm pretty sure, is a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.

Steve is waxing the transom as he earlier scrubbed off the sooty black that results from cruising with a diesel. The sun has come out and it's warming back up. We're almost to the tip of the St. Petersburgh peninsula with plans to leave here tomorrow and finally get across the opening of Tampa Bay. I hope everyone reading had a very Merry Christmas. We miss our friends and family very much, but are grateful for and enjoying life's little pleasures: floating docks, warm weather, clean laundry and good food.