I don't think so!

Day #4: Today we moved south timing our arrival at Wiggins Pass for high tide. The winds were up a little from the northeast. The Gulf was calm enough but there was a surge from the west. We didn't think much about it until we arrived at Wiggins and saw kids surfing in the pass--never a good sign. As the picture above shows, Wiggins is very shallow. With good reason, the idea of breaking waves and shallow water wasn't appealing but we didn't bail out until after taking a closeup view with the dink. Comfortable with our decision to bypass Wiggins we headed farther south to the Naples Yacht Club. 35nm today and 77nm total.

The Birds

Day #3: If Hollywood is scouting a location for a remake of Hitchcock's The Birds, I'd recommend Fort Myers Beach. Like clockwork scores of crows descend on the mooring field at dawn. The picture doesn't do justice to their numbers but you get the idea by looking at the standing rigging of the sailboat. Jobs aboard boats are broken into watches: first watch; dog watch; anchor watch; etc. To this list we need to add bird watch. This watch requires one crew member, preferably with a loud voice and an deep understanding of what frightens crows, to stand vigil. Lacking someone with the requisite skills means that the entire crew will stand poo-patrol shortly after dawn. 0nm today and 42nm. DBH

Derelicts

Day #2: It was a dinghy day as we explored the back waters of Ft. Myers Beach. It's amazing how many canals there are. Most of them are bordered by mangroves and you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. Of course about then a whole neighborhood crops up.

Derelict and vagabond boats give the cruising community a bad name. It's easy to see why here. Look closely in the above picture's lower right corner. Those white dots are a bane to every waterfront community. Many of the boats have sunk or are in some advanced stage of sinking. Once sunk it becomes the community's problem to clean up the mess. Not sure what the solution is but certainly understand the desire (even if it's misguided) to outlaw anchoring in the hopes of keeping derelicts out.

Still on the mooring in Ft Myers Beach, FL. 0 miles today and 42nm total. DBH

We're off ... and off the hard!

Day #1: For the last six weeks Nellie has been on the hard and we've lived aboard doing projects. Lots and lots of projects. What started off as a several day bow thruster install morphed, as only a boat project can, into something much larger: a whole new septic system, paint and polyurethane on every surface in the stateroom, a new stove, etc. Along with the big jobs a million little jobs got done too.

It was with more than a little trepidation that we watched Nellie get splashed this morning. The million-dollar-question: Would the new bow thruster leak? It didn't. Whew. In fact, miracle of miracles, all systems were go. We couldn't have picked a nicer day to get underway--sunny, calm winds and 70's F. About halfway to Fort Myers is Pine Island Sound. The path well traveled is on the west side of Pine Island. But it's the east side of the island, an area that's mostly terra incognita for cruising boats, that interested us. What we found were lots of mangrove islands, huge expanses of water, a chicane of channel markers and innumerable shoals. The latter being particularly worrisome. When the average water depth is five feet you usually don't know you're in trouble until you feel the thump. Well, at least that's how we knew we were in trouble. Dead in the water is not a good feeling. A look over the side confirmed what we already knew; the bottom was too close. In fact, all around us it looked too close. In cases like this we've learned it's best to drop the dinghy and use its depth sounder to find the way out. We did drop the dink and with the knowledge gained managed to extricate ourselves. That was the second 'whew' of the day. Our attention to Nellie's depth sounder could only be described as 'rapt' after the grounding.

Tonight we find ourselves on the moorings in Fort Myers Beach. All in all, a very good first day. 42nm today and 42nm total. DBH