Happy Birthday Gloria!

Happy monumental Birthday to Ray's sister Gloria today!  We won't mention any numbers.
Ray got up quite early this morning to watch for the earliest light to see by to get out of Little Shark River.  Why he thought he needed to open up the screen door and go outside to check that is yet to be understood.  In those few moments the mosquitos came in and buzzed around my head in bed.  Not the best of alarm clocks in my opinion, but it got me up.
I had the idea of each of us setting up a fan, one on the bow, one at the helm to try to keep the bugs away from us long enough to get out of this infested Everglade swamp.  It worked well for me.  Ray did not think it was worth the effort for himself on the bow.  He just drenched himself in insect repellent and went for it.  I don't know if both of those things worked, or it just wasn't as bad as last evening, but Ray got both anchors up and we were out of there by 6:30 a.m.
We wanted to get down to Marathon as soon as possible as winds were predicted to increase late.  What exactly late meant, we had no idea.
Today's seas were much calmer than yesterday.  Maybe a one foot chop on the quarter stern, which again made the auto pilot go crazy, but the following sea gave us good speed.  We again gave up on the auto pilot steering, this time more because of the tremendous amount of crab pots.
At about noon we were traversing under the seven mile bridge, and by 1:30 p.m. we were in our same 'ole slip, B15, at Sombrero Marina Dockside.  Of course our welcoming committee of friends waiting for us to get here was on the dock to greet us and help us get tied up.  Thanks to the generosity of Patty and Bill, we had a delicious spaghetti dinner to enjoy along with Cindy and Jeff who arrived just before we did.  They were supposed to be here yesterday, but they got stuck in much worse weather than we did.
So we are here for at least the winter.  No travels to blog unless we get the fortune of diving and or fishing on a nice day.  Will try to let everyone know when there is something noteworthy.

Polo

See the rain ahead

The black cloud over us

This is that rain ahead on radar.
Notice that the radar is set for a four mile radius.
Then notice that there is no rain on either side of us.
Just us in the middle of it with more ahead.

It felt like we were a Polo shirt on top of the agitator in a washing machine today.  This day on the Gulf of Mexico was worse than our crossing this time.  Not that it was bad, it was just a mixed up sea.  It started out nice until we got south of Marco Island.  With land farther away, we didn't have the protection from the northeast winds any more.  At first the waves were on the stern quarter, which wasn't terrible, just made the auto pilot work extra hard, so Linda decided to steer in order to make the ride better.  This helped tremendously.  Then we had to turn more to the southeast.  That put the waves directly on the beam, and they weren't getting any smaller.  Probably two to three foot waves.  Enough to make your sides ache from the rocking and rolling.  We had the radar on because it looked like there was a possibility of fog ahead, which we have experienced in this area before.  There was nothing to be seen on it except a sailboat behind us until we saw rain ahead.  It made me think of just recently telling Gary and Christelle that we have had a black cloud hanging over our heads for years.  Ray was recalling a sailboater just telling us that the rain knocks down the waves.  We found that to be true with the first squall.  The first squall also made the wind change direction to southeast, which probably also helped to lay the waves down.
The second squall was much more severe as far as wind, this time from the east.  It blew all the leaves off the Christmas pepper plant on the bow.  Now it looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas pepper.


Notice the rain on the enclosure, but the sun shining on the water in the distance.

We were right on the edge of the third squall.  Should have taken a picture of the radar again.  To our left was pouring rain.  To our right was sunshine.  It kind of startled us when a crab boat crossed about a mile in front of us coming out of that pouring rain and moving to better weather.


Once that third squall was past us, a double rainbow appeared to our left.

Once most of the squalls were gone, land was in sight, we just couldn't see it through the rain.  Ray thought for sure he was going to be out there setting the anchor just in time for another downpour of rain, but we finally missed the last one that passed to our left.  After getting to Little Shark River though, Ray wished it was the rain to make him miserable.  Instead it was the noseeums and mosquitos.  This was the worst we had ever seen them there.  Literally swarms of them.  Of course, this was also when we could not get the anchor set.  When pulling up the anchor the first time to attempt another try, a large sea turtle startled Ray right there beside the anchor.  By the third attempt we were both so aggravated that Ray just gave up worrying with it.  It was so calm and still, attributing to the incessant bugs, that we didn't figure we were going to drag anyway.  Ray did brave the swarm one more time just to throw out the Danforth anchor just for security.  Once that was accomplished we grabbed everything from the helm as quickly as possible and ran inside for the rest of the evening.
We so wish we could sit outside and enjoy the natural beauty of the Everglades and its wildlife.  In the time we were out there trying to get the anchor set we saw dolphins on the way in, a large sea turtle on several occasions, and some pink Roseate Spoonbill birds flying by.






Marco

Writing today's blog will be as easy as the trip was.  We dropped the ball in Ft. Myers Beach just after eight o'clock this morning.  Tom from "Q's End" hollered his good-byes to us as we exited the harbor.  We will see those guys again soon in Marathon.  The seas were calm, the winds were fair, and the six mile per hour cruising in the Gulf waters was enjoyable on this beautiful day.  Ray did most of the navigating today, well him and the auto-pilot, while Linda made Christmas presents for Abbie.  A seven hour travel day landed us at our usual anchorage near Umbrella Island, just north of Marco Island.  We love this secluded spot.  Linda attempted some fishing after arrival with just one little sail catfish caught.  Dinner therefore was black and bleu chicken with baked potatoes.  The rest of the evening is being spent doing paperwork.  Somehow it does not go away even when we do.

Ft Myers Beach

Today's journey consisted of 20 miles of travel, 14 of it backtracking to mile zero of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Thankfully the waters weren't as busy as they were Saturday, but still plenty.
We pulled into Mantanzas Pass just in time for the fuel dock to return our phone call. The diesel price was so unbelievable that we called him back. Florida is confusing because you do pay sales tax on fuel now. It was at least 50 cents per gallon cheaper though, so of course we planned to fuel up although not really needed.
Once we were off the phone we saw Tom waving to us from "Q's End".  He hailed us on the VHF radio and asked about lunch. We told him we would be about an hour by time we fueled up and got moored.
After we found our way to mooring ball 16 at Ft Myers Beach, we dinghied to shore to check in and spent lunch, afternoon, and dinner with Tom and Linda plus other new friends we met along the way.

Ft. Myers

We had a guest ride along with us for a while.

We pulled anchor out of Pelican Bay a little after seven, once we were done with sunrise viewing.  Today was a typical Florida weekend warrior boater kind of day.  No real excitement, just always amazed at how many boats there are near Coral Gables.  We decided they must sell Hurricane brand boats somewhere nearby as that was the majority of them.  There were lots of playful dolphins to watch as we traveled today, but they are always so camera shy.
We traveled 40 miles, partly out of our way, but always worth seeing our friends Bob and Nancy from "The Miss NanSea".  We met them over five years ago now when we started our Great Loop adventure.  Their floating home is docked at Paradise Marina most of the time.  They were actually out of town for the day, so as soon as we were secured in our assigned slip, we walked to the nearest bus stop to catch a ride to downtown Ft. Myers.  We had a nice meal at Ford's Garage.  Our next stop was The Morgan House which has a neat second story terrace overlooking the courtyard.  We were enjoying the lovely evening when Linda recognized someone walk right by our table.  Ray chased them inside after ensuring him it was Mike from "Dual Dreams", probably one of the first boaters we met on our first trip to Marathon.  Ray did not think he was with his wife Harriet though, but I said maybe she got all her hair cut off.  It was them!  We had just mentioned them yesterday in Pelican Bay most recently, but always look for them in Demopolis, Alabama as they were based there for a while.  We moved inside and sat and talked with them for hours.  This boating community is amazingly small and so much fun!

Some Beach

Have I mentioned how nice the weather has been finally?  Wore shorts for four days in a row now.


Don Pedro State Park beach view from the nature trail atop of the sand dunes

We got up fairly early this morning after a very peaceful night's sleep with the sound of waves crashing just on the other side of the mangroves.  It made us even more curious to explore Don Pedro State Park, as you can only access that part of it by private boat.  After making my sister's favorite breakfast, that Ray could barely look at (he got his own stuff), we set out on the dinghy.  It was nice to walk off breakfast on the nature trail.  It was a beautiful unspoiled beach.
By time we got back to the mother ship and ready for departure, it was 10:00 a.m.  By 10:30 a.m. we were traversing through the Boca Grande swing bridge with two other vessels.  They left us in their wake as we were fighting the tide again of course.  It took us two and a half hours to go 15 miles to get to Pelican Bay, just on the south side of the Boca Grande Channel in Charlotte Harbor.  We anchored in just about the same place we did on the way up in the spring.

There are actually at least two manatee in this picture,
although hard to spot.

Ray was so excited to go see if there were manatees in the little cove in Cayo Costa.  Just after lunch we headed there in the dinghy.  We were not disappointed.  Our first wildlife sighting was an alligator sunning itself on shore in the entrance channel, which we disturbed, but it kept it's eye on us the whole time.  Once inside the cove we shut off the motor and couldn't count how many manatees were in there, coming up for air.  There seemed to be several juveniles.  They weren't as playful as in the spring, but their snouts surfacing was entertainment in itself, never knowing where the next was going to come up as the water kind of stays stirred up in there because of them.  We just paddled and drifted around for probably an hour giggling at them, but always noticing the alligator watching us.
We finally tore ourselves away and headed to the state park docks to explore the island for our first time.  This was a larger island, so the walk to the beach was a bit farther than this morning, but still a neat pathway through "Natural Florida" as their slogan says.  It was a nice beach also, though a much steeper drop off once in the water compared to the shallow shore of Don Pedro.  Funny how different beaches can be so close together.  It seemed more interesting to us to see loads of people brought onto the island via ferry with all of their camping gear.  A truck would put all the gear in the back and pull an open aluminum Featherlite trailer with bench seats to get the campers to the camping area.  There were supposed to be cabins on this cabin trail also.  We did see some real small buildings.  Not sure if those were it or not.




Our evening was ended with a beautiful sunset view back aboard "The Second Noelle".



Picture pages

We lifted anchor out of the Jewfish Key anchorage near Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key at eight o'clock this morning.  Before we even got in the ICW channel, the entertainment started for the day.  There was a sailboat going by in the channel just as we were exiting the anchorage when all of the sudden it stopped moving.  Of course they were near what is probably the narrowest spot on all of the ICW.  From our angle it was confusing as to what the sailboat had done compared to the red and green buoys that are so close together, but come to find out, it was quite a bit out of the channel and obviously aground.  We eased around it and got through with 13 feet of water when you are in the channel.  In Sarasota Bay the same sailboat overtook us, then was going off course, realized it and cut back in front of us.
Our next encounter was a 60 foot sailboat that must have just left Sarasota, was towing a 30 foot center console fishing/diving boat on the hip (alongside), which had a smaller center console boat being towed behind it.  I guess that was to be the dinghy, but even it was a bit excessive.  In hearing him communicate with the first bridge tender of the day, it seems the whole family was moving to Key West in this manner, they were going to start their own fishing/diving charters, then leave the business to the kids to make money for them while they sail around.  They looked like the Clampets on the water.  We were even singing, "loaded up the boat and rode to the keys."  After listening to his constant chatter on the VHF radio to each bridge tender no less than three times for each one, and then asking this sailboat that had run aground today their opinion on where he could anchor before reaching Venice Inlet where they would exit the ICW and run to Key West outside in the Gulf of Mexico, we decided it will be a miracle if they make it to Key West.
The entertainment did not stop.  We witnessed the first, run aground sailboat veer off towards markers that were not for the ICW, then realize and correct itself.  Then that same sailboat angered another sailboat at a lift bridge that had the right of way, but run aground sailboat went through anyway.  He then apologized for messing up, but their excuse was that they had never been in this area before.  Hello, downstream vessels have the right of way no matter where you are on the planet.  There were no less than three men aboard this sailboat.  Between all of them they could not navigate the channel or know the rules of the road.
By the time we were going through Venice, we turned off channel 9 on the VHF radio so we would not have to listen to any more nonsense.  We did not require any more bridges to be open and the stupidity on the radio was just going downhill after hearing Key West bound sailboat say that they were south of the next bridge they were calling.  Pretty hard to need a bridge opened when you are south of a bridge and you are southbound.
It's too bad there are not dollar signs in front of mile markers so Ray could be more accurate on the mileage he tells me it is going to be for the day.  That's not to say I cannot look for myself, but I was told it was about 40 miles planned for today.  After 50 miles of travel, most of it against the tide of course, we dropped anchor near Don Pedro State Park in Cape Haze.
We immediately got the dinghy down to try to get to Publix and back before dark.  Our original plan was to take the dinghy to a dock at Don Pedro State Park, although we noticed on the way in that the dock did not have any cleats to tie to, yet had a welcome sign facing the dock.  We figured we would pull it up on shore if necessary, but also noticed another sign said that the park closed at 5:00 p.m.  It was already 4:30 p.m.  Ray read on our new Active Captain App though, a comment from another boater that said they took their dinghy to an old abandoned looking dock up a canal to get to Publix.  That made it only a block away instead of a mile.  We decided to try that first.  We found the mentioned dock, but it was at someone's house as this canal was totally residential.  There was no way we were going to trespass on someone's property.  There were some people that were outside at several houses, including that one but Ray said "If Christelle was here she would ask someone if she could tie to their dock to run to the grocery store, but I'm not."  We discussed dropping me off at the small concrete bridge to go get provisions, but we needed gas for the dinghy to play tomorrow, along with groceries and ice.  Our next thought was to try Don Pedro park and see how closed out we would be, and if we were, we would just go in the morning.  About that time a gentleman on the dock was working on his sailing catamaran, which we had already wondered how it got down this narrow canal, and asked us if we were trying to get to the store.  When we said yes Moe offered us the use of his floating dock to tie to.  While we were walking to the store Ray said, "This is the luck Gary and Christelle usually have, not us."     

We were exiting the canal just in time for sunset.

Moe mentioned how nice the beach side of Don Pedro park is, so we decided to go explore it tomorrow morning before we lift anchor since Ray says we only have 12 miles to travel.



It is so still and peaceful here.

.

Uncharted waters

We continuously enjoy the sights of white pelicans, and they
always seem to be near Tampa Bay when we travel through.

We left the quaint little town of Gulfport around 8:15 this morning after a very enjoyable evening out for dinner last night. We took a route we had never taken before. Yesterday we saw a boat turn around at the bridge we were heading for because it did not have enough clearance at high tide. We were hoping we would have enough clearance at low tide and we did by at least a couple of feet.
Our next obstacle was Tampa Bay.  It was predicted to be a light chop, but this was the smoothest we have ever crossed it.

Coast Guard cutter "Vise" doing what they announced as
routine maintenance to red marker "70" in Tampa Bay.
Notice how calm the water is.

Being able to make it under that low bridge helped to make for an even shorter travel day of 22 miles to anchor at our third new anchorage in a row for us.  We anchored just south of Anna Maria Island behind Jewfish Key about four hours after departure. That gave us plenty of time to explore. We decided to by dinghy since the water was so pretty here near Longboat Pass. Once we were near Bradenton Beach we decided to go across the ICW to the mainland side and try to figure out where we were by land in the Spring on the way up. Once that was a success we turned back to see "Teasa" coming through the Anna Maria bascule bridge, so we headed for them. We waved, hollered, and welcomed them to almost their destination. We kind of raced them to the anchorage and arrived just as they were putting their anchor down. We climbed aboard their sailboat and did a days worth of catching up. After a couple of hours we dinghied alone over to Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant to meet William and poor 'ole Judy from "Optimystique", who keep their sailboat in Bradenton, but will be bringing it down to Marathon again after the holidays.

Gulfport

We loved the anchorage at Redington Shores. Close to some of our favorite places and close to friends. It was a neat cove surrounded mostly by homes which afforded us some Christmas lights reflecting off the still water in the evenings. There were plenty of conveniences nearby including a bait and tackle shop that did not sell fishing licenses. The things that weren't close enough to walk to were still easily accessible via the trolley.
That kept us there another day. On Sunday afternoon we met up with Clifford and Heidi for dinner at a newly opened close establishment that they had not tried yet. We were all very pleased.
Linda is still contending with her annual sinus infection she gets as soon as we get here every year, so she left Ray to go meet with Angela and Daniel from "Teasa" on Monday as they finally found a weather window to cross the Gulf on Sunday night.
Ray took the dinghy to shore this morning to pick up some ice and bread at 7-11 before our departure. Again we were not in a hurry with a short travel day planned and the higher the tide got, the more comfortable we would be exiting the anchorage. At about quarter to ten we lifted anchor out of a very muddy bottom.  A little more than two hours later we reached our next first time anchorage at Gulfport, Florida. We have been to this small town on a few occassions by car, and were looking forward to embarking on it via water.

So close.

So far the extra perks have been that there is a new restaurant open since we were last here, there is a craft show going on, and the Met Life blimp has flown overhead. Ray's friend Scott rode his motorcycle down to join us for the afternoon.  "Teasa" should be here later on in the day also.

And yet so far away.

Pressed Luck

As to not press our luck with staying on the free dock overnight again, Linda rode her bike to Walmart at 10:00 a.m. when the pharmacy opened.  An hour later we untied from Indian Rocks Beach and moved five miles south to anchor in Redington Shores.  We are currently anchored in a cove near lots of good establishments including Wahoo's where we had lunch yesterday.  Who knows where our ventures will lead us today.