Hello, Ft. Myers Beach!

As planned, we left Boca Grande on Friday, January 26th, and enjoyed a relatively short cruise to Ft. Myers Beach. The 685-mile Gulf Intracoastal Water Way (GIWW), which starts in Brownsville, TX, ends just north of Ft. Myers. From Ft. Myers, you have two options to get to the east coast of Florida and the Atlantic Ocean.

The route from Ft. Myers to the Florida Keys via the west coast is characterzied by short trips in exposed, shallow Gulf Coast water broken by stops in protected, laid-back communities and is roughly 150 miles. The other option is to head east from Ft. Myers via the Caloosahatchee River and the Okeechobee Waterway. Most of this trip is in fresh water and includes five locks as you boat across the Florida peninsula. This trip is also about 150 miles and enters the Atlantic Ocean at Stuart, FL. Fortunatly, we don't have to decide which way to head yet as our plans have us in Ft. Myers Beach for the next six weeks or so.

As we mentioned in our last blog update, our original plan was to anchor out Friday evening and scope out possible marinas in the area. However, once we got here we decided fairly quickly that we would stay at the Semmer Electric docks by Bonita Bill's, a local bar/restaurant hang-out. Getting into the dock turned out to be a little stressful for us as we haven't had much experience dealing with the type of tides and currents we found in Matanzas Pass where the dock is located.

After some nerve-racking moments trying to fight the current as it pushed us away from the dock, we got secured with the assistance of Captain Bruce, the dock manager, and a few of the resident live-a-boards. The accomodations at Bonita Bill's are a series of funky little piers and docks that don't really qualify as a full-fledged marina, but we like it here as we are right by the bridge leading to Estero Island, where Ft. Myers Beach is located, and we have a great view of Matanzas Pass from the sundeck. We are technically on San Carlos Island, but the address is Ft. Myers Beach; downtown Ft. Myers is about 45 minutes north. Fortunately, there is a free trolley service that we can utilize to go to the grocery store, laundromat, etc., and the city has a local bus service that will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in Ft. Myers.

This is a shot of "Life's2Short" from the 65-foot bridge that leads from San Carlos Island to Estero Island. Our boat is parallel to the pier in the lower left side of the photo.


Bonita Bill's has karaoke on Tuesday and Friday nights, so we were "serenaded" by the locals our first night here. Saturday was spent cleaning and Sunday was spent relaxing. Greg and Sandy from "Latitude Dancer" stopped by to see us Sunday afternoon on their way back to their boat across the bridge from us. We met Greg and Sandy in Demopolis last summer when we were waiting for our transmission to be replaced and have kept in touch with them off and on since. We knew they were somewhere in the Ft. Myers area but didn't know we would be docked just across Matanzas Pass from them. We saw their boat when we arrived Friday afternoon and called to let them know where we were.

Jennifer's friend, Mark, had to be in the Ft. Myers area on Monday for business, so he drove over from Orlando Sunday afternoon and spent Sunday night on the boat with us. Since his girls live in Ft. Myers, he invited Jessie and Rachel over to the boat for dinner which he had prepared before leaving Orlando and brought with him - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and deviled eggs. We had a great meal and visit and then went to breakfast with Mark on Monday before he left.

The Captain had been fighting a developing cold, so the rest of Monday was spent hanging out on the boat and relaxing. By Tuesday, he felt somewhat better and we decided to walk across the bridge to see the beach. It was a cool, cloudy and breezy day so we just took a relatively short walk along the beach, found a place to have lunch and came back to the boat. The next few days were also cloudy, cool and breezy so we stayed pretty close to the boat, but by Thursday afternoon we were ready to venture out again. We walked down Main Street about a mile to check out Salty Sam's Marina and the Parrot Key Caribbean Grill and then came back and walked across the bridge to check out a few more of the local hot spots.

On Friday morning, we walked across the bridge again to the Farmer's Market to buy some fresh local produce and ran into Greg on the way back. He had been to a Flea Market in a nearby neighborhood and was bringing his "new" bicycle back to the boat. He told us the Flea Market was a mile or so down San Carlos Boulevard, so we decided to drop our produce off at the boat and walk down to check it out. The "mile" ended up being at least two miles, but we finally made it and spent an hour or so browsing through the merchandise. They were also serving food as part of the fund-raiser, so we grabbed a bite of lunch (chili and hot dogs) while we were there.

Since we had already walked most of the way, we decided to walk the remaining distance to the grocery store in Summerlin Square to stock up on a few items before returning to the boat. Having done that, we rode the trolley back to the bridge and walked the rest of the way back to the boat. Our legs and feet had had more than enough walking for one day, so we spent a quiet afternoon and evening on the boat.

Saturday was Artfest at the Ft. Myers River District (downtown), so we rode the trolley to Summerlin Square to catch the first of the two local buses that we needed to ride to get there. Two hours and one bus transfer later, we arrived at Artfest and began touring the 200 booths that had been set up while munching on a big bag of "Florda's Best" kettle corn - one of my personal favorites!

We saw a wide variety of original art work that included various types of paintings, sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, photography, woodwork, metal, glass and much more. I was especially excited by one artist's collection of beautiful glass blowfish, so the Captain sneaked back to buy one for me while I was using the restroom. What a guy!

Below are some of the pictures we took at Artfest. Cool stuff!





Super Bowl Sunday arrived and we walked over to Bonita Bill's around 4:00 p.m. to see what they had going on. After hanging out there for a while, we decided to walk across the bridge in search of a big screen on which to watch the game. We stopped in at the Gulfshore Grill initially and then made our way to the nearby Surf Club where we enjoyed free pizza and wings at half-time.  Having consumed all the food and drink we could handle, we walked back to the boat to watch the rest of the game before calling it a night.

Monday was a "stay on the boat" day as it was cloudy, cool, breezy and rainy. The weather was a little better on Tuesday, so we ventured out long enough to take care of some business and get the laundry done. The laundromat is also in Summerlin Square, so we packed everything up, walked to the trolley stop and rode to Summerlin Square. We returned by mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day lounging around on the boat.

After enduring several days of clouds, wind and cool temperatures, the weather is finally improving and we are looking forward to seeing the sun again. Bob and Linda Eckels (friends from Springfield) had to postpone their visit last week and are scheduled to fly into Tampa/St. Petersburg this evening where they will spend the night and drive down to Ft. Myers tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon. They will return to Springfield Sunday, and we will leave at 9:00 a.m. Monday morning for Key West aboard the Key West Express, a local passenger ferry service that utilizes hi-tech jet powered vessels to make daily runs back and forth to Key West (140 miles) in about 3-1/2 hours (http://www.seakeywestexpress.com).

This is the Key West Express that goes by our boat each day at 9:00 a.m. on its way to Key West and again at 9:30 p.m. on the return trip.


A college friend of Todd's (Paz) rented a house near Key West and when he found out we were going to be in Ft. Myers, he insisted we come down and spend a few days. We haven't seen Paz in 10 years, so we are excited to be able to hook up with him and see Key West at the same time! We will return from Key West next Thursday evening (February 15th) and should have lots of fun and exciting things to report in our next blog update.