Sunday December 29: Waiting out the Weather at Marco Island

The five and a half hour trip from Fort Myers Beach to Marco Island was calm enough - just still a lot of wind in your face. Good thing for the flybridge cover - once again!

We stayed between one and a half and two miles from shore. Depth about 15 - 20 feet or so. Still crab pots every so often so it was easy to focus on the task at hand. The high rises lined the shoreline most of the 45 miles.

It was very quiet with little boat traffic out here -- until the invasion of the cigarette boats! There were a pack of them - probably 15 or so - headed somewhere very fast. Maybe Key West? Anyway, it was fun watching them zoom on by.

Not sure where the rest of the day went though once we made our way to the marina here. Steve went on a bike ride to scout out the area. I ..... well, there were 4 college bowl games on so that's all I needed :-)

This morning we awoke to a brilliant PINK sky. You know what they say: Pink at night, sailors delight, pink in the morning, sailors take warning.

So we checked the weather, discussed our options and determined the best bet was to stay put today. I mean there are quite a few ball games on today not the least of which was the Brown's last game (at least we don't have to go through the stress of wondering if/how we'll do in the playoffs, right?). Who wants to travel through thunderstorms and winds?

Basically, we need 3 more travel days to be at Marathon. From here (Marco Island) we'll travel 30 miles to Everglades City. But we need to travel at least mid-high tide to take the back route behind Marco Island. With the moon being what it is, we can't leave until 10 am but that's ok as it's only a 4 hour trip.

After that we need decent weather for the 45 miles run to the Snake River and then good weather for the last 45 miles to Banana Bay.

Hopefully the weather will come together and we'll get to Marathon on New Year's Day - or the day after or the day after that .....



So Steve spent part of today making pizza dough. It has to be made 24 hours ahead of time - sounds like dinner tomorrow night! The other 3 parts (he made 4) went into the freezer to be used at a later date.

The rain finally stopped for good (well, almost) and we headed off for a bike ride to the beach.

It's an amazing beach that runs the length of Marco Island but sadly there is minimal public access to it. And there is an $8 parking fee to boot which seems to be a bit excessive.

We think it's a case of the well to do wanting to keep the riff raff off of "their" beaches. Maybe we're wrong though .....

Regardless there was a really cool beach riding thing that I'm sure is not nearly as cool as it looks - kind of like the pedal carriages that we rented with my parents and the kids in Montreal. Fun to look at, not so fun to pedal :-)

Tomorrow: off to Everglades City - after the tide comes up of course. I remember this particular route well - it's the first place I ran us aground. I can show you the exact spot on the chart :-) Not this time though!!