Sombrero Beach

Logan and I are sitting in the City Marina community lounge area today setting up plans for the next week or so here in Marathon. Yep, we are still on mooring ball O1 here in Boot Key Harbor. We had set our sights on wrapping up the to-do list and setting sail Saturday April 20th…until that cold front that swept through the US last week and brought some nasty squall action to the Bahamas. We decided to postpone our passage for a few days so the weather could settle down. The new plan was to set off tomorrow, April 24th…until the wind picked up and shifted around to the north creating choppy sea conditions with high swells in the Gulf Stream. The NEW plan is to leave in the next “weather window”. The good news is that everything is packed and ready to go, so when the weather decides to cooperate, we will be ready. As eager as we are to move along on our journey, we have decided to make this first big passage as smooth and safe as possible. In the mean time we plan to tackle some minor boat projects and hang out on Sombrero Beach.

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Things are going great here in Boot Key Harbor. We’re just a few days away from leaving the country. Yesterday we said good bye to our first visitors, Gillian’s parents. We all had a blast. Here’s one of many highlights from their stay. More to come soon.

We left Marco Island on an eerie morning. The weather looked like it was going to make for an uneventful motorsail all the way to Little Shark River…looked like. There was some fog that morning in Factory Bay where we were anchored, but fog lifts as the sun comes up, right? The further out into the gulf we got, the thicker the fog became. Before long we could barely see 1/4 mile in front of us (or in any direction for that matter)! This was getting ridiculous – Logan was glued to the radar looking for boats and I was glued to what water I could see to look for those darn crab pots. It was exhausting but just when we thought that there was no end in sight, we started to be able to make out the horizon. Whew! Before we knew it, the wind had picked up, the sun was out, our sails were up and were were on a perfect beam reach on our way to Little Shark River to anchor for the night.

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The cold is gone and the heat is on!

We ended up spending a couple extra days in Fort Meyers Beach. It’s a great little beach town. Spring Break must still be going on because the beach was packed with people. We made our way to all the local spots that were recommended to us: SOBs (Shrimp Oyster Brewery), The Cottage, and Petey’s Upper Deck at the Matanzas Inn. All of them were great. We also made it to the Friday FMB Farmers Market. Not a huge event, but some great produce at fair prices and Gillian picked up some some spicy pickles. Our last day there, we went out to the Capt Ron’s favorite Colombian place with him and Ken and Joanne from the boat yard. The five of us shared some authentic Colombian cuisine and swapped sailing stories. We said our final goodbye to Captain Ron – we will miss him a lot, but hope to meet up with him later this season in the BVIs.

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