Ft. Myers Beach

Thursday January 17, 2013
26 27.310 N
81 56.462 W

One of my new "rule of thumb" habits is to watch what the sailing boats do. When we struggled out of bed and put on the coffee this morning, it was hard to ignore the fact that the sailing boats were leaving the anchorage "en masse". So we rubbed our groggy eyes and looked at the weather forecast, to discover that the cool front due on Friday was a day early and was bringing some strong winds.

Sailors are strange people

So we decided to beat a path back to the Ft Myers area so that we would be strategically placed to get Kylie to the airport on Friday - tomorrow. So we had the dinghy back on the roof and the anchor up in no time flat. Unfortunately our departure was only about an hour after low tide so we needed to carefully feel our way out. All went well.

The wind picked up as we headed south, but it was mostly on our beam. The front "blew through" at a bout 1 PM and we retreated to the pilot house and Deidre made hot chocolate all round. We had been offered use of a private dock on the south end of Pine Island, but we decided to get close to the AP, just in case the wind was strong in the AM. We reserved a ball at Ft. Myers Beach, and arrived about 3 PM. It was blowing a bit and the balls were in poor condition, many of them missing the pennant. We tried 3 or 4 times before succeeding. At one point we ran over a ball and heard a loud "crunch". I assume it hit a prop.

The pennant was in poor shape (covered in growth) and I was concerned it could fail so decided to put our own lines on the ball, so we launched the dinghy in record time and Kylie and I added an extra line from our bow to the ball. Much better.

Chicken salad for dinner followed by plum pudding and hot custard in front of the fire. Kylie chose a DVD (Mr. Brooks) and we settled down for a windy night. I have just put an extra line on the dinghy, run up the batteries and we are going to hit the sack.

Friday January 18, 2013

Easy morning. We loaded into the dinghy about 10 AM and headed to shore. Ky needed to be in a cab on her way to the AP by 12:30PM. We paid for the ball and then headed into town looking for breakfast, which we found at a restaurant overlooking the beach. Ky ordered the taxi and it arrived on time and we said our goodbyes. It had been fun.

Deidre and I killed an hour wandering around this beach town doing a little window shopping. We were impressed with the beach and decided that we would like to return one day in the summer. Back in the dinghy we cruised around the shrimp fleet till we saw a "Shrimp for sale" sign and found a place to land the dinghy. We bought two pounds of fresh large headless shrimp for $20. The lady even boiled them for us and packed them in ice.

Moored at Ft. Myers Beach

Back on Tide Hiker we made contact with Bon Voyage and plans for dinner. Deidre and I were both looking forward to the reunion - we had left Bon Voyage in Charleston December 4. The mooring field was in bad shape, so I identified a ball for Bon Voyage and visited it in the dinghy and added a 1" line and a float so they would have an easy pick up. They arrived on time.

Deidre put on a slap up shrimp dinner and we drank two bottles of champagne. It was fun.