Fort Myers, FL

Days on cruise:  267

Distance traveled: 35.7 miles

Travel time:  4 hours, 6 mins

Total trip odometer:  5,803 statute miles

We both slept badly Saturday night stewing about the problem with the battery charger, and Bob even managed to dream about a variety of other catastrophes befalling the boat. Isn’t the mind a weird thing in the middle of the night?

We left beautiful Cabbage Key at 9am and headed south. The mostly very narrow dredged ICW channel was tedious at times, in that it was a sunny Sunday in February, so LOTS of boat traffic was out.

All the sailboats we called on the VHF to arrange slow passes didn’t have VHF on board or weren’t using it; all the Go-Fast boats were going fast and waking us violently; there were lots of “Slow Speed, Minimum Wake” zones for manatees, which kept us going at slower than usual speed. So we settled into it and figured it wasn’t a real long day, and “this too shall pass”. And that’s what happened, of course. Maybe we were a little grumpy from lack of sleep.

On our way we passed North Captiva Island, then Sanibel and Captiva Islands. North Captiva used to be part of Captiva, but a 1921 hurricane created this new pass, below,  and since then they’ve been separate islands. A bridge provides access to Sanibel and Captiva, but North Captiva can be reached only by boat.

Pulling into Legacy Harbor marina at Fort Myers, we were astounded to have our lines caught by Marc and Michelle of “Marc’s Arc”, Loopers we met in Norfolk, VA last year who closed their Loop in Grafton, Illinois last September. They have good friends who winter in Florida, are down here for a visit, and saw our boat come in. They came on board Next To Me to visit and it was great to catch up with them!

We checked into Legacy Harbor Marina where we hope to arrange a battery charger fix soon. It’s a nice marina, and there are hordes of Loopers here, though almost all of them are folks who completed their Loop in previous years, so we don’t know them.

Super Bowl parties were being planned, of course.

Mostly it was an uneventful day, just moving toward being able to return to carefree boating, anchoring out when weather conditions and our interest align, and enjoying the sunshine and relatively warm weather compared to most of the nation. Looper Midnight will come early tonight.