Day 244 – 251; Jan 18 – Jan 25: The morning of Jan 18th, we were off to Marco Island from Fort Myers. Our path out of Fort Myers took us by the repaired causeway between Fort Myers and Sanibel Island. You may recall that Fort Myers and Sanibel Island were devastated by Hurricane Ian in September of 2022 when it slammed into the coast as a Category 4 storm. It was the worst storm to hit Sanibel since 1926 and the 3rd costliest ($113B) weather disaster on record worldwide. While portions of Fort Myers were up and back, portions were still devastated. We attempted to get an Uber/Lyft to take us out to Sanibel Island just to walk the beaches and look around, but we gave up after about an hour. We figured if we can’t get someone to pick us up to take us out there, how the heck would we get back!
Back to our journey…..It was about a 4 hour open ocean run from Fort Myers to Naples where we ran a couple miles off shore, so no dolphins! Not to disappoint, as soon as we pulled into the channel in Naples and began passing we gorgeous waterfront homes on our way to the Naples Yacht Club, our dolphin escorts arrived! The Naples Yacht Club was of course beautiful and quite friendly. Interestingly we met several visiting AYC members there. They stopped to say hello, recognizing our AYC burgee. We enjoyed walking the beautiful streets of Naples, especially 5th Avenue which was full of exclusive clothing and gift shops, restaurants, real estate offices, and banks. Bentleys and Lamborghinis were a dime a dozen and nary a Chevy could be seen for miles! It was quite exclusive and fancy!!
We were looking forward to seeing Rick and Constance, friends and colleagues from our Northrop Grumman days in CA and NY. Rick and Constance now winter in Naples, leaving the cold of MD behind. Had a great dinner with them at Mr. Big Fish – fabulous – highly recommend! We also connected with Wayne and Nancy, our friend and architect from Annapolis who also winter in Naples on their ~60’ Marlow named Grace with their 2 pups Bailey and Sampson. Thrilled to be working with Wayne again as it looks like we’ll be closing on the condo in Annapolis by the end of the month and his genius artistic and structural expertise is sorely (very sorely!) needed for a full gut and renovation. More on that another time! Really enjoyed dinner at Chez Boet – a lovely little French restaurant on 12th Avenue with Wayne and Nancy.
Saturday, Jan 20 we were off again and headed south to Marco Island. We were still chasing the sun, without much success I might add, but enjoyed the dolphins immediately coming along side of us again and showing us the way out to the open ocean. This was a much shorter run, about 1.5 hours, to Factory Bay at Marco Island where we dropped an anchor for the night. We had access to a dinghy dock at one of the marinas to go ashore, so we walked about a mile to the Esplanade to check out the shops and restaurants. Having found an amazing ice cream shop, we were quite happy! Then lo and behold, we found a very nice anchorage that was much more calm right there off the Esplanade. We took the dinghy to check out the winding path through a series of canals to get there and found the depth to be acceptable. We moved the boat to Smokehouse Bay where we reanchored and were very happy with that decision…. Much more calm and much more to do; easy (and free) shore access and fellow loopers in the bay. Bonus was the Winn Dixie (grocery store) right around the corner with its own dinghy dock!
The trip between Factory Bay and Smokehouse Bay, however, was eventful. It was literally a 10 minute run but very quickly we had an alarm about low hydraulic fluid in the stabilizers (which are the fins on the bottom of the boat that counteract the forces of waves and water and prevent side to side rocking). We immediately shut them down since we were traveling at very low speed with no waves and would check it out when we anchored… Gary thought probably some sort of a clogged strainer or something. Well we were wrong and when he entered the engine room found hydraulic fluid spewed everywhere. With a little diagnostics, we figured out that something in the hydraulic pump on the port engine failed (perhaps a seal or gasket) and we had a hydraulic fluid fountain that sprayed 5 gallons of hydraulic fluid everywhere!
After some consultation with the experts, we came up with a plan to get them fixed AND a way for us to safely run in the short term without using the stabilizers but also without damaging them. This gave us a little more time in Marco Island than we had planned, but we did enjoy a nice 5 mile hike to, from and on the white sandy beach there. We concluded this was only the 3rd beach walk we’ve had on the loop… hard to believe! Sylvan Beach, Clearwater Beach and now Marco Island. We’ve got some beach walking to do once we get to the Keys!
This little hydraulic issue also changed our plans to go to Everglades City by boat, explore that area and do an airboat ride through Everglades. We instead left Legacy anchored in Smokehouse Bay and rented a car. Really enjoyed the airboat ride with Captain Bradley who seems to be an alligator whisperer. He literally called one out of the Mangroves and she came to him! He pet her on the head…. Yikes! This was our first alligator sighting since hitting the Gulf. Others have reported seeing gators further north, but this was our first.
This has been a great anchorage, but alas we will head north tomorrow back to Fort Myers to meet up with Sarah and Richard. We reconnected with Scott and Amy on Who Dat from Wisconsin who we met in Clearwater Beach. SAGA also arrived today after spending a week or so tooling around in the Fort Myers/Naples area with friends. A fellow AYC member came by on his paddle board to say hello, having spotted our AYC burgee. 2 more loopers we’d not met yet arrived today…. Love meeting new friends!
Dinner for 3 of the boats will be on Legacy where SAGA is bringing bratwurst for all, we’ve got all the fixings ready as well as Old Bay French fries in the oven and Who Dat is bringing sides and dessert… rumor has it it’s a key lime pie! That’s what Loopers do!
chashurley
Quite a CEO trust between the sunset at Marco Island and all the alligator shots