Captiva island was a really nice stop except for this "winter tide" stuff. I don't mean to dwell on tides, but I must admit TVA makes this a lot easier on the river. We have summer pool and winter pool not a daily or hourly pool! And it changes everyday, sometimes four times a day - arrgggg! Anyway, departure was delayed a while to get more water leaving the bay. That part was better, but I still dredged up all kinds of sand getting out of the slip. Oh well, we got out and didn't hurt anything. Maybe I'll get better at this with more practice in tight locations that have shallow water.
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| Old Captiva House |
From Captiva, we traveled to Tarpon Point Marina in Cape Coral. The trip over was interesting in that this day had more boaters out than any previous day. Basically everyone here seems to have one speed when running and that is wide open!
All that wasn't any big deal until we got to within 2 miles of the turn out of the channel into in secondary channel leading to the marina. Locals have named the section " The Miserable Mile" and it was. All of the waterways north and south of this mile merge together and speed limit reduces to be an "idle speed, no wake zone" and I can assure you that no one even thought about slowing down until they were at the sign. After leaving that craziness behind, the short trip into the Marina was pleasant. This is a very nice location right next to a Weston Hotel that has brand new concrete floating docks, two restaurants, shops and three condo towers. There has been live music every afternoon and we have finally reached warm weather!
Track and photos -
www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/943537
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| The Miserable Mile |
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| Tarpon Point Marina - East side |
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| Tarpon Point Marina - West side |
We are spending a couple of days here. To start our first day, I have to do my chores which includes washing the salt off the boat from our last run. Another difference from the fresh water of the river. You never see that stuff until you stop and touch the hull or rails and there's this crust on everything. After the morning, we went for pedicures and then Ubered to downtown Fort Myers. Our friends had recommended Capone's Coal Fired Pizza which was great! The inside decor was all based on the gangster and the glass floor area was quite unusual (see photos). We sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine and then went searching for the 86 Room. It is a kick back to a '20's speakeasy so there is no sign outside. Inside is one big room with exposed brick walls, some beautiful custom woodwork, jazz music playing and old silent movies projected onto one wall. It was very much fun! On day two, Susan is taking us to the Ace Hardware and Publix. These are becoming typical stops for our larger city locations. Even though the weather forecasts say this is a cloudy day, it has been raining off and on. This continued through the afternoon and then came fog! Not something you normally see at 4 PM! By about 8:30, the fog had vanished so we're hoping that's the way it will be in the morning.
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| Pedicure time!! |
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| Downtown Fort Myers |
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| Capone's vault located under the restaurant floor |
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| History of the vault |
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| 86 Room speakeasy |
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| Susan and Regina enjoying the view |
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| Afternoon fog!! |
Today we move on south to Naples with a three day stop at the Naples Boat Club. The first thing we do is go back down the Miserable Mile to reach the ICW and thankfully today was much more sane than the trip in. It was a fairly short run out of Cape Coral until we were in the Gulf. Wind this morning was straight out of the east which created some small waves that were hitting us right in the port side. This didn't cause us to have a rough ride, but it did make holding course a bit of an effort. We had about two hours of this combined with watching for crab pots until reaching the entrance to Naples Harbor. The entry was interesting with a little rough water and boat traffic coming out, but we got in without any trouble. Naples Harbor is long and not too wide, but has basically no speed limit! Quite a few boats came roaring past on their way toward the Gulf as we continued in looking for the Naples Boat Club. Our destination was almost at the end of the harbor where the first order of business was to get fuel and pump out the holding tank before moving into the slip. Arrival day means washing the salt off the boat and today we also took advantage of the free laundry facilities at NBC. After getting these things done, we Ubered into town for dinner at Old Naples Pub. They had live entertainment, good food and was also a quaint location with lots of local history documented in photos and news articles. Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/944604
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| Naples Harbor from the stern of the boat |
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| Naples Boat Club |
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| Naples Harbor toward the south |
The first full day at NBC started with getting a repair taken care of. I had located a service called Cruise Cool that will send technicians to your boat. They arrived about 9:30 and in a little more than half an hour had not only located, but also, repaired a leaking water line connection in the forward bilge! We celebrated that by going to breakfast at EJ’s Cafe and visiting Tin City. When we returned, I broke out my Ace Hardware parts and fixed the leaking water line at the aft toilet. Our friend Andy from Marietta lives here now and met us for drinks and dinner and to deliver a bunch of packages that I had shipped to him. We had much fun catching up! We visited Old Naples a couple of times to walk through shops, see the town and try some restaurants. Many places have live entertainment and outside dining. The weather has been really nice so we took advantage of this every chance we got.
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| EJ's Cafe is here in this waterfront development |
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| It's lobster time!! |
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| Our friend Andy at the boat |
On Monday we finally got a weather window to leave Naples so we jumped on it and headed for Marco Island. This was a short trip that took less than two hours, but got us a bit further south. This will provide a good place to make the next leg toward Marathon. Just like almost every other week since we got to Florida, we will have to wait here until the next front passes which should give us a good travel day on Thursday. Since we have a few days, we will explore the island and we started with Snook Inn for an early dinner. This place is right on the water, has live music, food was very good and was a short walk the marina. At arrival today, we have traveled 1,390 SM which is 1,223 NM or roughly 1/5 of the total Great Loop. Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/948255
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| Snook Inn overlooking Big Marco Pass |
So we’ll be here a few days. Hopefully when I do the next update, it will (finally) be from the Florida Keys!!
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