Thursday November 8: Back at Banana Bay!!!

Now it feels like we're back home :-)

Yesterday's Dream is back in Slip 8 - overlooking the Florida Bay.

All is right with our world.





Tuesday we left Fort Myers Beach - but only after Steve was again working with the alternator belt.

The design of the Ford Lehman diesel engine is somewhat strange in that in order to change or replace the alternator belt, the belt must run on either side of a large hose that is a part of the antifreeze system that circulates through the engine.

So if the belt has broken (as it did the other day), this large hose containing hot antifreeze must be unhooked from the engine. We're talking antifreeze that is 180 degrees as well as an engine that is likely somewhat hotter.

The solution for not having to deal with this scenario is to deal with it ahead of time. With the engine nicely cooled off in the morning, Steve drained the antifreeze from the engine, removed the large hose, looped TWO spare belts around the hose, and zip-tied them up and out of the way until needed!

Works quite well and eliminates the dangerous situation of working with hot antifreeze and a hot engine.

With that job completed we headed out. The gulf waters were so flat it was kind of crazy. From Ft. Myers to Marathon most of the travel is on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

No problem if the winds are light or from the NE to the SE but west winds can make the travel miserable or not doable depending on the strength of the wind.

We arrived at Rose Marina on Marco Island and settled in after fueling up. We've stayed here a number of times in the past - pleasant folks and always very nice.

It was nice to be tied in and plugged in. My plan was to watch the election return to keep up with what is going on in the outside world!

Of course checking the weather is always first so we can plan tomorrow's travel.

There are two choices from here: travel south on the Big Marco River (which is not really very big and IS rather shallow). Or go outside around the Cape Romano shoals. Outside is longer but we can start out 3 hours earlier because we'd need to wait for the tide to be coming in to travel on the inside route of the river.

Leaving Marco Island

Wednesday morning it was a no-brainer! There were no winds so we were up and out of the marina by 7. Another super day.

Steve getting the lines off of the dock!

The plan when we left was to take another two days travel and pull into Banana Bay on Friday. Once we saw how nice it was, plans changed. Plus we were getting current pulling us along so we were traveling most of the time at between 9 and 10 mph - which of course for us with a normal speed of 8 mph was great!!


Steve was of course fishing but was also on dolphin watch! Probably saw a dozen dolphins riding our bow wave at various times throughout the day.

No fish while traveling but once settled into our anchorage at Little Shark River, Steve finally found the fish!


Not really the kind he was looking for but sail catfish (so called because of the very tall dorsal fin) seemed to love the shrimp heads he had for bait. Four in all - should make for a nice dinner tomorrow :-)


The sunset was nice and for a bit we though we might see our first green flash of the season.

Oh well.


Last time at pulling the anchor. Next stop: Banana Bay!!

Another perfect travel day .....