Naples and Fort Myers

From our last report in Marco Island, we did spend one more night in the area, on the hook in Smokehouse Bay, in the heart of the Island.  This is a very protected spot about 15 minutes in from the main channel.  We dinghied to the marina to visit the bar for happy hour, and in the morning dinghied to the local grocery store, which provides a dinghy dock for boaters.  What a service! 

We continued north for a very easy run of only 20 miles in protected inside passages to Naples.  Our friends in Naples provided a contact for us at the Naples Sailing and Yacht Club to enable us to stay for a couple of nights.  Beautiful club, and very well located.  The heart of old Naples was just a few minutes bike ride away. 







We got a chance to give our new bikes a real workout with a ride to the beach area, and an area called Port Royal, which is littered with $50M homes on the beach.  Naples is one of the wealthiest areas of Florida (hard to believe after seeing the houses on the ICW in Southeast Florida) and our friends commented on the influx of private jets over a weekend.  The Marina being on the approach to the airport gave us a first hand understanding of that. 





From Naples, the run to Fort Myers Beach was about 30 miles, but outside in the Gulf of Mexico as there is no deep enough inside passage.  We did enjoy a swim along the way in very calm waters. 

We anchored the first night, and then spent an afternoon at the beach on Sanibel island before going back to a marina to spend a day provisioning awaiting Greg's sister Denise's arrival, which was late at night, and we got underway the next day.

We spent another nice afternoon at Sanibel Island, then up the Caloosahatchee River towards the town of Fort Myers, with an intended one night stop at the St Charles Yacht Club. 

Unfortunately the weather turned very windy, and slightly cool, but fortunately the Club was outstanding and able to accommodate us for 3 days, so we stayed put and did our exploring from there.  The highlight of our stay was a visit to the Edison and Ford Winter Estates.  Yes, that Edison and that Ford, but not the estates you  might think.  Relatively modest winter homes, but a base of research for Edison for many years.  He was awarded at least a patent a year for 65 years straight, and well over a 1000 for his lifetime. A very interesting visit.


With improved weather, we did continue up the river to Fort Myers for one night.  A good one night town, which did provide good access to a Publix grocery store.  We headed back down the river and north up Pine Island Sound, to Cayo Costa State Park.  Although a bit windy, we did find a very good anchorage in Pelican Bay, and enjoyed a quiet night.  We visited the park the next day, by dinghy, and walked the beach.  The weather was forecast to deteriorate for a couple of days so we headed back across the sound to the mainland, just south of Punta Gorda, to hang out for a couple of days.  We picked a very nice marina with a pool to enjoy the brief periods of warm weather.  Even had a visit from a small pod of manatees around the boat.

From here we will head south back to Fort Myers to deliver Denise to the airport for her flight home.  We will spend a couple more weeks exploring this coast further north, awaiting our next guests arrival.