Off the grid, and back on it.

Hello from Naples FLA. Spray is tied to a city owned mooring, the Internet and cell phones work fine, our bellies are full of take-out pizza, and we just had hot showers.

 

Three days of travel from Marathon have brought us here, with much beautiful wilderness in between. We left Marathon right on schedule Sunday at 10 am, traveled a couple miles west and then turned straight north under the famous 7 mile bridge.

We cruised 27 miles, in water that averaged 8 ft deep, and in wall-wall sunshine and easy seas, to drop anchor off the beach of Cape Sable. Winds were from the NE but there were small rollers from the NW so we put out a stern anchor to force Spray to point into the waves. Sheila's iPhone actually worked well enough for texting at least but I had no Internet at all (the horror!).

 

As remote as Cape Sable is, we weren't alone. There was a group of campers on the beach that had arrived in several fishing boats, and a guy in a small open sailboat came in and anchored not too far away (he slept in the boat). Due to Spray's 4 ft. draft we anchored maybe 1,000 ft. from shore and dinghied in to walk the dogs. Sheila picked up much plastic that had washed ashore.

We had an hour to walk the dogs, then back to Spray to feed them supper, then later back to the beach for final purging of the dogs and enjoying the sunset (top photo). We all slept well.

 

Monday we brought the dogs to the beach at first light and pulled anchor by 8 am for a long day's 50 mile cruise to the NW, typically 2 miles off shore (Everglades National Park) Again solid blue skies and calm seas. The only downside was opposing current of 1/2 to 1 knot all day long. Our goal was Camp Lulu Key, just past the end of the Everglades and with beaches for landing the dogs. Here's a Riggs-eye view of Sheila rowing us to shore there.

Again we weren't alone as there were 2 or 3 groups of beach campers, all of whom had arrived via kayak from Everglades City. We were glad not to be sleeping on the sand and away from the gnats, although since I was too lazy to deploy the stern anchor we had a couple hours of uncomfortable rolling during the night.

 

Sheila and I first encountered Camp Lulu on 12/31/1999 when we camped there over the New Years with my sister and BIL and maybe 90 other folks.

 

Today we pulled anchor about 9 am and headed SW for over an hour so we could round Cape Romano Shoals and then turn NW to pass outside of resorty Marco Island. Civilization!

We continued 10 miles past Marco up to Naples Inlet, then through 3 miles of channels that was a raceway for idiot boat drivers, until we reached Naples Public Dock. They require a pumpout of the holding tank on arrival, which is good as we would have needed that soon. Next we tied to one of their mooring balls ($10/night which is cheap). Time for a nice walk of the dogs to a local park, then getting takeout pizza and racing back to Spray to eat it while still hot. Finally back to the City Dock for showers.

 

Tomorrow we'll get going early and retrace the 3 miles of channels to get us back into the Gulf of Mexico, then head NW to Fort Myers, where we go inside to continue up the ICW towards Sarasota. It's 100 miles to there by boat so we'll take 2 or 3 days to get there. Stay tuned!

 

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