As we move along the Florida coast, we’ve seen a different personality develop based on the area.
The rustic part, with its quaint villages along the Big Bend from Appalachicola to Tarpon Springs has a backwater charm with a diverse set of wildlife.
The Tampa Bay and Fort Meyers regions have a ton of high rise condos and hotels forming concrete canyons with a more human-type wildlife.
St. Petersburg was a highlight for us.
The sections of the Gulf Coast between Tampa and Fort Meyers, like the Venice area, are more laid back, but still have the Gulf Coast Charm.
As we were to find out later, Naples has a wealthy clientele with the shopping, restaurants and homes to match.
Continuing on our trek down the coast, we anchored at Cayo Costa Island for a couple nights, and then with some bad weather moving in, we decided to move to a marina.
The marina was typical of some of the marinas around the Gulf coast: smaller, tight to maneuver and close to places where we could resupply if we needed to.
We had to double back north about an hour to get to the marina.
You had to watch your location in the navigation channel going in as the channels was very narrow.
Palm Harbour Marina assigned us to Slip A0, which was a wall. As it happened, we were right next to a nice swimming pool and a hot tub.
The gate to both was less than a boat length from Selkie.
We planned on spending the next four days there.
Anchoragesz around here are mostly big, exposed to wind with low-lying land and vegetation, and shallow. It’s harder to anchor here than up in the North Channel and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron.
There’s also more anchorage competition, in particular with derelict boats.
Derelict boats seem to be the bane of a lot of people’s existence who ply the waterways down here.
In some cases people are saving money by storing their boat for free. Unfortunately, it seems to be months at a time, so the boats deteriorate without someone staying aboard and caring for them.
In other cases, it’s some person really down on their luck, struggling to get by.
Some boats are out-right abandoned, complete with tags condemning them.
Unfortunately the situation is leaving the rest of us boaters with a bad stigma for towns, cities and property owners along the waterways.
Many seem to frown on boaters anchoring, enough so that a group of landowners is trying to ramrod legislation through the Florida Legislature to prevent anchoring in a large area around Biscayne Bay near Miami.
The problem with that is many boaters need to anchor out, either to pass through the area, to rest, or to stage going to the Bahamas. There’s not enough marinas to take everyone.
If passed it will turn into one of those unenforceable laws representatives like to congratulate themselves about.
So for that and other reasons, we don’t mind going into marinas as much down in Florida if the weather is going to be a little nastier.
We know we can survive just fine if we were out in an anchorage in a storm. Like I’ve said before, we are into pleasure boating.
We’ve done the other rough and tumble stuff in the Pacific Ocean. We’ve done it enough to prove to ourselves we don’t like it.
Palm Harbour Marina was affiliated with Palm Harbor Resort.
There’s a small ferry boat right next to Selkie that we could take for three bucks for one round-trip.
We went over to the resort and its beach three out of the four days to check it out.
The restaurant there was good, and it had some of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.
The waitress at the restaurant happened to be the wife of the ferry captain, so we were able to get some more intel on the area on what to do or not to do.
The grocery store was about 2 miles away from the marina so we were able to provision.
While we were there, an old college friend reached out to see if we had time to get together.
We of course, said yes.
So she came over with her sister.
We hadn’t seen each other since we graduated from college in 1980.
She studied mechanical engineering with me, and we went through many of the courses together. We studied a lot and partied with our mutual friends during school.
It was really a fun time in college, in part because of her.
We went out to dinner at the restaurant and we all had the fish tacos which were excellent.
We said goodbye after a long walk on the beach and went back to Selkie for the evening.
The rest of the time at the marina, I spent much of my time doing some chores around Selkie, reading the news, and sitting in that 104° temperature hot tub.
The storm came and went. It was a cold front with a wind event the following day, and we were in the perfect spot to “survive” the storm.
After Palm Harbour, we headed south past Cabbage Key down to Fort Myers Beach.
We passed North and South Captiva Islands and the iconic Sanibel Island.
All were still recovering from Ian. You could tell from the construction cranes that were ubiquitous in the area, plus the wrecked boats along the waterway.
We followed the course that seem to make the most logic.
There was a bridge that was 26 feet high and we needed to be careful going underneath it.
With our radar mast up we think we’re a little less than 23 feet high, but we’ve never tested that out on hard objects overhead… like bridges.
Three feet may sound like a lot in terms of having plenty of head room to pass under the bridge.
But when it’s your stuff that can get snapped off, you are a little more cautious.
As we approached the bridge, we verified on the charts that the height was supposed to be what it was.
I slowed Selkie down to a bare minimum speed and then put it in neutral as we came close to the bridge.
Libbie was up top watching as we coasted underneath.
We had less than 3 feet of headroom as we crawled underneath so we were glad we took our time.
We continue on over to our anchorage by Fort Myers Beach
The anchorage was wide open to the south, but the winds were out of the north and the anchorage offered us enough protection so we settled in for the night.
After we anchored, we were making dinner and we noticed a Coast Guard vessel coming in.
It was a Coast Guard towboat, similar to the River tow boats pushing a barge with a lot of “stuff” on it, and we couldn’t figure out what its function was.
They anchored relatively close to us, which made us a little nervous.
We had our anchor light on and we were legal where we were.
As it turned out, they were just doing the same thing as we were: anchoring for the night.
The next morning when we woke up, the Coast Guard was gone.
We wondered where they went.
We weighed anchor after breakfast, and headed down to Naples.
As we approach Naples, we realized that off the distance there was that same Coast Guard towboat. It was the USCG Vice.
In the daylight, we could see a lot of buoys on it. It was a buoy tender, and a navigation marks maintenance boat.
We continued up channel to Naples where we were meeting some friends for the next couple nights.
Naples Marina is a great marina, matching Naples, which is a wealthy town. There is lots of shopping and top end restaurants and a nice beach.
The beach was a lot more crowded than what we’ve been used to.
We’ve been spoiling ourselves at Boca Grande and Cayo Costa and a couple others along the way.
There were a lot of people on the beach at Naples, enjoying their holiday.
That night, we had some friends over to the boat for a glass of wine before they took us back to their home for dinner. We had a great time with them.
They asked me to help fix a clock. Apparently I did ok as it was still telling the correct time a week later.
The following day was more day of chores and riding our bikes around.
Most of my chores consisted of trying to repair the flat that was on my fold-up bike.
It’s amazing how much time one can consume figuring out why spare tires keep popping on your boat.
After some perseverance and some not choice words at my wheel, I was able to solve the problem.
The bike gives us a set of wheels to go exploring around little bit more.
That evening a high school friend came by with his wife and we had some wine on the boat before they took us to dinner.
I had met him in Austin before Christmas for an hour, but this time Libbie and I got to know both of them a lot better.
It was a great evening… when you see someone you haven’t seen since we were (barely) young men in high school, and then find after an almost 50 gap that we still are good friends… it was an awesome feeling.
The next day one of our buddy boats pulled in Naples and we were able to spend a little time with them to get caught up.
That day was a day of chores, provisioning and exploring, so we got some supplies from local grocery store and rode our bikes around.
You may have seen on the news that a private jet had crashed near Naples the end of January. The smoke was visible from the marina.
The two passengers and one flight attendant survived the crash as well as the people on I-75 whose cars were hit.
But it was a downer for the day as they lost both the pilot and copilot on the plane when it slammed into a sound wall next to the Interstate.
Naples airport is very active with private jets.
There is a lot of money in Naples.
It’s a beautiful town and fun to visit.
Libbie and I went to see the botanical gardens at Naples as our activity, one of the days and it was really well done.
It’s a nice lush garden, and a walking path where we could get some miles walking.
In addition to riding our bikes there. Libbie and I had dinner last night at the restaurant that was right by right by the marina it was nice to see Selkie just sitting out there from our table we ate our dinner.
It was nearing the end of our season on Selkie, and the furthest south we went this time on the Loop.
It was time to turn around and head back north to where we would store Selkie for the summer.
Selkie 