A Great Day on Marco Island

Day 7:  March 5, 2013

Today has been a great day.  It started with us arising at around 6:00 and fixing another sausage and gravy special breakfast.  The rest last night was not as good as other nights because we were in this nest of numerous boats and the wind came up.  I estimate it was blowing about 25mph. When we went to bed, it was blowing lightly from the west and the fetch (the amount of open water over which the wind blows to create waves) was quite small so the waves were minimal.  However, during the night, the wind changed to the north and increased which caused all of the boats to rearrange their location.  That’s not a problem if everyone was conscous of the swinging possibilities and also as long as one’s anchor holds through the rotation.  We have an anchor alarm on our GPS which warns us when the boat moves more that a preselected distance.  Of course ours went off in the middle of the night.  I got up and checked the GPS and I had not allowed enough distance in the setting for the normal swing. 

Our Close Friend of Last Night

In the morning, the anchorage was quite rough because the fetch caused by the wind shift was much longer.  The boat was bobbing back and forth like a cork making sleeping somewhat more uncomfortable.  It also appeared that the anchor had in fact dragged a small amount in the direction of a sailing catamaran that had been anchored beside us but was now in our rear.  I decided to move to another spot that was more open and possibly had better holding ground for the anchor when I realized that the cat boat was heading out. 

We pulled the Dink alongside, attached the electric trolling motor and crawled in for a trip to the dock.  We cut loose from Panache and began drifting back.  The battery for the motor was almost dead.  I had charged it up before I left Ohio, but I assume that the battery is bad and will need to be replaced.  There was just enough juice in the battery to get back to Panache and accomplish a battery swap with our backup battery.  It was a “bobbing” ride to the Rose Marina where we met Bob Boardman, my cousin Fran’s husband, with whom we planned to spend the day.  We traveled to their lovely Marco Island home where we spent time discussing the things that good friends of the past do upon reuniting. 

We decided that we would tour the Island and take in the many sights in this interesting place.  The beautiful homes are of course everywhere.  This is a heavily populated place.  The original developer of the island made it a honeycomb of canals so many home have water access.  There is one really beautiful golf course. Fran and Bob’s home is located on the edge of it..  The island is also home to a number of the little burrowing owls that the locals have taken under their wing (pun intended) by cordoning off the burrows and placing small perches for them to use.  We drove around and saw several of these neat little guys.  They also have nesting bald eagles on the island; however, they were away from their nest as we passed.  Their beaches are amazing.  We walked two beaches, one called Tiger Tail, is known for its accumulation of shore birds that inhabit the shallow waters.  On that one, we did see a number of wading birds specifically dowitchers, yellow legs, and sandpipers.   The other, a public beach that is open to residents of the island, is probably 100 to 150 yards wide and goes for probably a mile or more and is absolutely white.  It is completely clean and amazingly beautiful. 

A friendly guy

From there, we traveled to a very large development that was stopped in progress by the EPA.  I can’t estimate how large it is but it is big and truly gorgeous.  There were to be many large homes but it ended up with about 15, all of which are huge.  When we got to the gate, Bob told the gate keeper that we wanted to go in and see the whore house.  Obviously that got our attention, but he explained that an original island inhabitant named “Horr” had built a home and started a pineapple plantation.  We drove to and wandered through the ruins of this interesting structure.

I failed to mention that we stopped for lunch at a local fish shack, Pelican Bend, and enjoyed a wonderful fish sandwich and trimmings. Also, we made a trip to the local Wal-Mart to pick up some bread and games for our evening entertainment on the boat.

Back at the Boardman home, Fran fixed us a delicious barbeque pork dinner before our departure.  We wanted to get back to the boat before dark in case we needed to do some rearranging in our anchor placement. 

Tired Pelicans near the marina

We said our goodbyes to these good friends and headed for the marina.  We crawled back in Dink and headed back across the cove.  It was a cold, splashy, bumpy ride but ole Damn Dank brought us home.  We were happy to see that the boat had stayed put and was in no worse for wear in spite of a day of pounding and jerking on the anchor rode (rope to land folks). 

We spent the remainder of the evening playing a bouncy jerky game of dominos.  Bed came about 10:00 but sleep came quite a while later.  It was a rough night.