Arrival in Fort Myers and Setting Up the Boat

Day 3: March 7, 2018

Follow our progress using this link: Steve's Spot

Again, this travel day was most uneventful.  We had nice weather to drive our final miles to North Fort Myers.  We got on the road at about 6:45 and arrived at the RV and Boat Storage Lot at about 3:00.  We didn’t hurry.

Our bunk site in North Fort Myers

We unhooked the trailer and drove to the Fort Myers Yacht Basin and made arrangements to dock the boat for three nights starting tomorrow.  We decided that it was too late to rig the boat, launch her, and get into a slip before dark.

I contacted my cousin, Susan, who spends three months of the winter in Bonita Springs.  Sue is one of two cousins on my mother’s side of the family. Growing up in Missouri, we spent considerable time with both her and her family.  We agreed to meet for dinner near where she is staying and enjoyed a wonderful light meal at a local pub.  After dinner, Sue invited us uto visit her condo where we spent a couple of hours bringing each other up to date on our lives and the happenings of our families.

Heading out

At around 8:00, we headed back to the Storage Lot where we climbed up into “Second Wind” for our nights rest.  The temperature was slated to hit the low 50’s so we covered ourselves in our “long johns” and hit the sack by 9:00.

Day 4: March 8, 2018

We slept well.  We were both tired and as a reward for a safe arrival, we slept for over 9 hours, something we seldom do at home. For our breakfast, we created pancakes slathered with real maple syrup from Vermont and sided them with a couple stripes of Tyson’s Ready Bacon. 

By 7:30, we had the truck hooked to the trailer and pulled into the rush hour traffic.  Interestingly, during the day, the cars that you see in Fort Myers are from most of the states of the Union, however, the traffic in which we were flowing were

all displaying Florida plates.  The local service folks and year round residents were

going to work.

The launch ramp in the city is very poorly set up.  The downtown is so crowded that parking is impossible.  They have an area where vehicles with boat trailers are privileged to park, however, as we discovered the last time we were here, once you start setting up the boat, cars and trucks pack around you such that it is impossible to pull out. When we were here before, we had to unhook he trailer, pulled the truck around behind the boat, attach a chain to the trailer, and pull it out of the slip so that we could make for the launch ramp.  

This time, we found a wide spot near the ramp itself were we set up camp to do our rigging.  No one seemed to complain including the local marine police who were patrolling the area. 

We felt that we had the whole day to get the boat ready so the stepping of the mast and all of the things needed to get ready went very smoothly and relatively

View from our slip - a bit noisy.

quickly.  The wind was blowing at around 15 knots from our stern so we opted not to put on the jib until we got to our slip.

As we were finishing our setup, a gentleman came by and told us that there was a huge pipe that had floated across the ramp making it impossible to launch. It was amazing.  This thing was probably 40 feet long and close to a foot in diameter.  As we were watching, the city marine officer drove up with his truck and trailer anticipating the pulling of his boat from the water.  I beckoned him to join us and he commented thing had been the “bane of my existence for the past three months.” He said that no one would come up with the cash required to remove the thing.  He and I got lines, lassoed it and drug it down the retaining wall where he secured it. An untimely delay was averted.  

Our neighbors

We launched the boat without incident and headed up the Caloosahatchee River towards the Yacht Basin.  They had offered to assist us in our dockage but since I could not raise them on the radio, we had to attempt it alone.  Here is the deal.  The wind was blowing hard at our back, our slip was at the end of a narrow passage requiring us to make a tight U-turn to enter heading into the wind.  Couple that with the fact that our assigned slip little more than the width of the boat.

I headed into the passageway in neutral using reverse to keep my speed to a minimum.  The boat would not turn as sharply as needed to hit the slip the first time so as I passed the opening, I reversed the motor backed around and pointed straight into the slip. Now, I have made some really ugly landings in my years of sailing and I purposely do not report those in my writings but this one looked as if I knew I was doing so I will Crow!

We rewarded ourselves for being securely moored in a slip with a fine sea food lunch at Joe’s Crab shack. The remainder of the day was spent returning the

Fine dinning on Second Wind

Second Wind In her tiny slip

trailer to the storage lot, visiting a grocery store and tinkering around the boat. 

We were tired we decided to dine on the boat with New England Clam Chowder from a can and dark chocolate with pretzels and sea salt bark for dessert.  Again, bed time came early.