On Tuesday, March 23, we left our friends at White Marlin Marina to head down and under 7 Mile Bridge over to the Gulf of Mexico and up the West coast of Florida to the Punta Gorda area on Charlotte Harbor, just a few miles north of Ft. Myers. We had made arrangements to keep Endeavor at The Burnt Store Marina just south of Punta Gorda. We had been here previously ---spent a month at this marina on our sailboat, "Assisted Living", back in 2011 and actually had kept her here from time to time as we left her during the hot summer season--probably about 3 years in total.. It was falling into disrepair then, but has been purchased by a large marina operating company--Safe Harbor---and they're pouring money into the place with all kinds of up-grades, including floating docks (instead of fixed docks where you're constantly adjusting your dock lines to accomodate rising and falling tides---these docks float up and down with the tide but you are secured to the dock so the boat and dock rise and fall together. No line adjusting necessary.)
Our first day started at 8AM and we headed West to 7 Mile Bridge, passed under and began our passage north to drop anchor at the mouth of the Little Shark River, in the Everglades. The day was PERFECT! Very little wind; very little wave action; clear sky overhead and beautiful blue water below. The boat did well as did our new electronics and the new auto-pilot made the trip quite pleasurable. The only inconvenience was the occasional string of crab pots that you have to steer around, but there were not as many as I remember from prior trips along this route. We arrived at Little Shark around 3:30 that afternoon and dropped anchor in an oxbow near the mouth with very good holding and wind protection. Surprisingly, bugs were not a problem. (Our last visit to this spot found us infested with "No-seeums", little bugs that bite and cause large welts and extreme itching on some people (including Diane)). Even though I felt we had a good anchor set I was up much of the night keeping an eye on things as the current changes 180 degrees here which requires the anchor to turn 180 degrees as well. This can sometimes result in the anchor failing to reset and the boat can drag with the current (or wind) into shallow areas. My vigilance went unrewarded as we had no anchor dragging issues all night.
The next day, being the longest of the passage, had us up and gone at 7:15, just after sun-rise. It was a little choppier but still very comfortable and we made good time. There were many more crab pot arrays along this stretch but we managed to avoid them. Very heavy as we approached Marco Island.
We covered roughly 90 miles this day (from Little Shark to Cabbage Key near our final destination. We simply ran out of daylight and decided to anchor approximately 2 hours south of our destination right off the famous Cabbage Key restaurant. (We've stayed here many times before and occasionally dinghied over to the restaurant for lunch or dinner. It's a very popular spot and you can only get to it by boat.). Our past experience here usually found us among only 2 or 3 other boats in this rather small anchorage. This time there were 8 or 9 other boats. It's right around the corner from our very favorite anchorage--Pelican Bay, on Cayo Costa Island, but we noticed as we were coming into Cabbage Key that Pelican Bay appeared to be quite crowded. So we dropped the hook in about 8 feet of water and spent a very comfortable night.
The next morning, after a leisurely wake up and breakfast we headed up Charlotte Harbor for a couple hour trip to our final destination --Safe Harbor Burnt Store Marina--near Punta Gorda. We've been here quite a bit before--back when we had our sailboat and even once on Opus V, so we are quite familiar with the marina as well as the surrounding area. They've poured a bunch of money into the place including the building of the floating docks, upon which we are securely tied.
Retrieving our truck from Marathon and bringing her up here proved to be quite a challenge. Usually we have Enterprise pick us up and we drive a one-way rental to where we left our vehicle. Drop off the rental and return in our vehicle. This time proved to be a bit more problematic. There were absolutely NO rent cars available in South Florida---Spring Break; approaching Easter week-end. Even if you could find a car to to rent they all were requiring a 2 week rental. But we were desperate to get our truck up here in order to prepare for a visit by our son, Scott and his girl-friend, Karina. We ended up paying an Uber to drive us to Marathon (Don't ask how much---It was a lot; but we needed the truck.) We accomplished this on the Friday before Scott's anticipated arrival on Sunday. It was another incredibly long day --left here around 9AM and got back around 7:30 that night. (We're to old for this!!!)
But now we had our truck and were able to use it to provision in advance of Scott and Karina's arrival. More on that in my next post.
