December 24: Traveling With a Competent Crew!!

So we had a plan! And since Becky had earned her Competent Crew certification on the sailboat trip to Greece, it was a stressfree trip for the captain ;-)

Truthfully, she has been a competent crew member her whole life having grown up boating - starting at age 2! And the plan worked great.

After spending Monday night at Burnt Store Marina we headed out with the state park at Cayo Costa as our destination.

Steve of course was trolling as we traveled and was rewarded with a perfect appetizer size cero mackerel. Nice job of netting by our competent crew member :-)

Weather was overcast but still plenty warm and we ended up just staying at the dock at the park instead of anchoring out.

This made it easy for Steve and Becky to take a bike tour of the island - about 6 miles worth!

A bigger plus though was being able to fish from the dock after 5 pm. Steve had memories of the delicious sheepshead he caught a couple of years ago (not to be confused with the Lake Erie fish named a sheephead!)


Sadly no sheepshead - but even better was a grouper!!

First grouper Steve has ever caught when it was in season! Excellent eating for sure ...












There was talk of swimming but I thought I was going to have to peel Becky's fingers off of the railing :-)

Eventually they both were in the water - but it was NOT warm. I think the swim lasted all of 5 minutes.

This is not the Keys with it's warm waters!


But the sunrises are just as good as the Keys ...





The next two days are mostly pictureless - camera lens broke :-(  We still had a good time though at Ft. Myers Beach on Wednesday. Road bikes to the beach and pier.

Thursday it was time to move to Sweetwater Marina on the Caloosahatchee River north of Ft. Myers. This is were we would leave Yesterday's Dream while we traveled to DC to visit family. Nice little marina and not too far from the airport in Ft. Myers. Becky would then fly back to LA from there.

As we were tying up the boat, Becky was trying to figure out what landed in her hair - turns out it was the cutest little tree frog!

Good thing he was quick to jump or she might have accidentally squashed him :-)

And our second time to use UBER. Mmm ... maybe not. We kept getting - "not available". But then it WAS Christmas Eve (about 5:30 or so). Maybe we didn't plan so well .....

In the end all was well as a nice young man answered the call. He was even nice enough to turn around and go back to the boat when I discovered I neglected to bring my wallet with ID. Fortunately we weren't more than 5 miles or so away ..... Hard enough to fly these days without trying to do it without an ID :-)