Naples to Marco Island

The rudder was delivered to the marina Tuesday afternoon, the guy did a great job.  We left Naples at 11:30 AM.  When we reached the gulf the fog was fairly thick so we went slow.  About half way to Marco Island it began to lift.  The trip was uneventful, thank God!  We anchored in Factory Bay at about 3:00 PM.  After a little rest we took the dinghy to shore and a tiki bar for a few libations.  Candy had a wonderful Key Lime Martini (2); I had a couple of Land Sharks, we are back on track!

This picture is coming into Marco Island.

This next one is My First Mate relaxing with a Jimmy Buffett book, "A Pirate Looks At Fifty".

This last picture is the Moon rising over Marco Island.



Today was a good day!

Greg

Day 4 in Naples



This is our fourth day in Naples.  Yesterday I finally found someone that was willing to fix our rudder.  It should be ready this afternoon.  It rained on Monday so we took a Trolley tour of the city.  I don't know where regular people live because we didn't see any homes for under $1,000,000.  I am sure the one below is a little more!

We are on a city mooring that is the bargain of Naples only $10.00 a day.  If you look close you can see that rudder is a little short.



Today we walked to Starbucks to use their WiFi and have lunch.  We also ordered our tickets for our flight home for the Rome trip.  The last picture is Candy on the computer.



When we came in from the boat it was 80 I am sure it is not much different on the Cape!  Tomorrow the plan is to head for Marco Island, IF the rudder is ready a big "if"!

Greg

Ft. Myers to Wiggins Pass "oops" Naples



Today's blog is brought to you by the First Mate.  Left Fort Myers Beach Friday afternoon a little later than expected - 2pm.  Still thought we could make Naples before it got too dark.  As we merrily putted along, the Captain thought maybe we should stop sooner because we had vowed not to travel after dark.  According to the charts and guide, we believed that we could go into Wiggins Pass even though it advised you to be careful of shoaling and shallow depths. Since we only draw 3 and half, that has never been a real problem.  Well they should have a mark with a big flashing sign saying "Don't Enter" far enough out so you don't experience what we did!  To see the posting that says depths could vary due to shoaling you have to have entered the channel into the pass.  Guess what, we stopped, hard.  Yours truly, who as we all know does not like heeling, found herself hanging onto one side of the boat with her Captain hanging outside of the boat and then jumping (??) to the other side to break away.  Break away we did and so did about 2 feet of rudder.  I'm hollering, "isn't that the rudder floating away", and this was indeed confirmed by the Capt.  At which time he gets into the dinhgy and tells me to continue circling around in the Gulf of Mexico solo.  I did what any First Mate with any common sense would do and said, "Are you kidding?" and you can imagine the response.  So whoever nominated me for "Wife of the Year" in 2010 can now consider doing it again for 2011.  A Seatow boat came along and told us they plan on dredging sometime this month.  Information just a little too late.  So luckily we still have steerage with what is left of the rudder and off to Naples we go and into the night.  There were no other boats out so collisons were not a big concern.  Just trying to see the marks with our big spotlight was enough and we anchored in the channel heading into Naples.  Meanwhile; I'm suffering with a head cold that makes me wish I had selected a different cruise line that has a sick bay.  The Captain may marry couples at sea but his best advise was to get outside and let the sun bake it out of me!  Wish me well.  I blame it all on the airlines and all the delay time on the airplane.  So sometime today, the rudder situation will be addressed in Naples, of course it is the weekend.  So we may be here a few days.  Over and out or whatever you seamen say.....

Candy

We are back in Ft Myers

We had an eventful trip down to Ft Myers.  I was apprehensive with the weather down south because we were flying through Atlanta.  We took the bus to Logan Monday morning.  I was expecting our flight to be canceled, but every time we checked they said it was on time.  When we arrived at the airport all the flights to Atlanta except ours were in fact canceled, we took off on time.  For anyone who has made connections through Atlanta knows getting to the connecting gate can be a challenge!  We arrived at our gate in "T" terminal, our connecting flight to Ft Myers was at "E" terminal, the opposite end.  When we checked the monitor it said it was on time, so we ran!  We made it just in time for them to announce a delay.  The flight was schedule to leave at 1:18 PM, we boarded the plane at 2:30 PM. Again our flight was the only one leaving, all the others scheduled flights were canceled!  When we left the gate the captain announced that our take off is going to be delayed because we needed to be deiced and there were other planes ahead of us.  We took off at about 6:00 PM to the cheers of the passengers.  Everyone was grateful to be one of the very few planes to take off that day.

The last three days we have been getting the boat ready for the next leg of our adventure.  We are headed to Naples this afternoon about 20 miles away. 

Greg

Last day (for now)

Tomorrow we fly home, why I don't know it was 80 today and not a cloud in the sky.  I am looking forward to being home for the holidays.  I spent the whole day cleaning the boat inside and out.  We will be away from the boat for a little over 7 weeks so I wanted to make sure everything is secure.  As promised below are pictures from our last leg to Ft. Myers Beach.

This was a cool sculpture on the waterway out side Ft. Myers.  It is two Manatees.

A little bit of "double wide" heaven down by the river.

It is hard to miss Ft. Myers with their high rise condos.

This is the north end of Ft. Myers Beach, very nice.

This is coming into Rives condo complex.  the slip is at the left end of the building tucked inside, I could not ask for a better place to leave my boat.  Thanks Rives and Kathy!!

Greg

olga to Ft. Myers Beach, FL

We made it!  The boat is in Rives slip.  This afternoon we started the process of unloading the boat.  It is amazing how much stuff we have kept on the boat. Since we are leaving it here until the second week in January I felt we should clean it out.  Tomorrow we will clean her up.  It is hard to believe I have been living on the boat since September 15th.  What is harder to believe, Candy has been on the boat since Oct. 17 with only one night ashore, now that is unbelievable!  We have had a blast doing this together.  I will blog tomorrow night and include some pictures from today's trip.  The camera is still on the boat.

Greg

Stuart to Olga (almost Ft. Myers) FL

This is the first time I have been able to get to the Blog since we left Stuart.  Stuart is the start of the trip across the state to Ft. Myers Beach where I am leaving the boat for the holidays.  We will be flying home on Thursday the 18th.  For this leg of our adventure we are taking the Okeechobee Waterway, which like the ICW, a series of rivers and canals with the gigantic Lake Okeechobee thrown in.  The trip across includes 5 locks, two up to the lake and three down to the Gulf.  Our first stop was Saturday night at the Indian Town Marina.  They hosted a cook out that night which gave us an opportunity to meet some fellow travelers.  The marina has this huge field filled with boats.  People leave their boats here in the spring and come back in the early winter to launch them to go cruising.  the opposite of what we do up north.   The above picture is of us in the first lock, we were the only boat in the lock.  we were lifted 13 feet.

The captain is getting the boat ready to sail across the lake, about 25 miles to the other side.

We had been looking for alligators since the Alligator river in North Carolina.  We finally found them, a bunch of them along the canal from Clewiston to Moore Haven.

We saw two air boats along the Caloosahatchee Canal.  Today we negotiated two locks, one swing bridge and two Draw bridges.  Tomorrow we will have a short day, we are only about 30 miles from Ft. Myers Beach.

Greg