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TOPS THE DONUT! We left at a leisurely hour as we didn’t want to leave without first stopping at our favorite morning coffee joint, Bennett’s, which is just across the street. We had to have just one more of those devilishly delicious homemade donuts. I love that place. The people are very nice and it just tops the donut when they bring out a special dog paw embossed stainless steeled water dish for Ziggy, with a special non slip black rubber bottom, and two simulated beef steak dog biscuits served butler style on a wax paper place mat to our table. STUPID RULE Fort Myers waterfront is a very doable stop with a dog. The area is surprisingly dog friendly except for the big waterfront park that posts “No Dogs Allowed” signs all over the place which we just outright ignore as we continue to walk the “public” paths with Ziggy. If someone wants to stop us and tell us to get out then let’s see them try. So ridiculous. CANINE FRIENDLY One other noteworthy place for boaters traveling with dogs is the nearby Hotel Indigo which is very dog friendly. You can take you furry pal inside the lobby and straight up the elevator to the 7th floor, to the top deck where the pool and bar are and order up dinner or lunch as you gaze out at the most amazing view over the Caloosahatchee River and surrounding areas. You can also take in some Japanese food with your canine companion inside the lobby area at Ichiban, the Japanese restaurant. These dog friendly establishments plus several other nearby restaurants with outdoor seating make it possible to bring your pal along without having to lock him up in the boat with the AC on. PEA SOUP It was thick as pea soup early this morning. Not the image you’d think of in Florida but by 9:30 most of it had blown clear. We started the engines and I shook the lines vigorously to dislodge several spiders that took up shop before throwing the lines aboard and shoving off. We don’t want any crawly hitch hikers. I remember very well the stretch we will take today. It is challenging even in good weather with several range markers and shallow spots and enduring a lot of waking from other boaters. Perhaps it was so difficult because last time we were navigating in 30 plus winds. Today it is 10 knots and clear out. RIVER OF FIERCE PEOPLE We head out into the channel of the Caloosahatchee River which means “river of fierce people”. Yep, those wakes they give off are pretty fierce. We’re back out into the wide expanse of the river but keeping in the center of it by keeping within the long line of channel markers. Occasionally we’d slip a bit out of line but the skinny waters would soon show up on the depth sounder and we’d quickly hustle back into the safety of 8 feet below us in the channel. You can’t day dream around here or you crab out of line and into shallow waters. Even though the river is wide you only have a thin sliver of water in the center to travel through right in the center so any hope of getting a picture of Edison’s or Ford’s summer home (which is the big tourist draw to this area) were impossible as we were too far away.
Right away we notice there is a missing green marker at Four Mile Point. Oh well, just keep on trucking and hope for the best as you make a slight turn to go under the bridge. We pass an endless array of more manatee signs. Most are displayed parallel to the concrete edge of river so we assume it’s for shallow draft boats going towards shore and out of the channel. The signs that face us directly and perpendicular to shore are the ones we pay attention too. In certain rare areas they say you can go a ridiculous speed of 25 knots in the channel. No wonder they are fierce river wake makers here. How silly! Whoosh, one goes by.
FURRY HOOD ORNAMENT
Ziggy is lovin’ the day and going as far out on the bow as possible, just like a hood ornament in the wind. It was fine when we were going manatee slow but now we’re in the “fast zone” and afraid for him so we call him back. I have to take the steps down in the back so he can’t keep jumping up on the gangway. He’s got one thing on the mind and that is riding the waves out on the bow even though he is going on 15 years old. He loves to ride out on the bow of the boat and take the wind on his nose. RESPECT THE NUN We’re approaching Shell Point now. I remember that area as being very shoaly. We spot a green nun marking the moving shoal. I’m sure they have to move that little nun around a lot. Just beyond is the red and white striped range marker but you can’t keep the white stripe on red lined up and still pay respects to the green nun. We decided to pay loyalty to the green nun and ignore the now greatly misaligned stripe of the range marker. OSPREYS
It’s a beautiful area if you could only just take time from watching these darn markers to look around. I got a few pictures of local ospreys sitting atop their sturdy nests stuck between the numbered plates of the channel markers. I never get tired of looking at these birds. They seem so fierce like the eagles with many of the same visual characteristics, like similar shaped beaks and talons. They aren’t wusses when it comes to hunting as many times we’ve seen them holding down a huge fish almost bigger than they are and ripping away at it and then there are the more land locked ospreys that have adapted to catching land mammals like rats or gophers as seen clutched in their talons flying in the air overhead heading for their nests. MISERABLE MILE I didn’t give it that name but can understand how it got its name. I wonder if it includes the last patch we just came through. I think it should. So we head out now through “Miserable Mile.” At this point we are back in the ICW again. It’s a long straight stretch that is exposed to the currents and winds of the Gulf. There’s a lot of shoaling in because of its exposure so you have to be diligent watching your hind quarter making sure it lines up with not only the markers ahead but behind you.
It’s a difficult task and one
that doesn’t come natural. If you don’t, you may find yourself crabbing
precariously out of the channel. It’s a bit intense but if you just watch what you
are doing you will be fine. Locals speed by like nobody’s business but when you are
unfamiliar with the area like us it pays to take it at a normal speed and be alert.
We don’t really take anything for granted when we’re on the water. FLAT CALM We both remark at how different the trip is from last year. It’s flat calm unlike the 30 knot rough seas we experienced last year that quickly fetched up the shallow waters in this area. It looks like they replaced #23 from the storm damage of last year but still left a ragged bent part sticking out as a reminder. Beautiful Sanibel Island is to our left. It’s a long stretch of low land and Pine Island on our right. We’re again heading up Pine Island Sound, a wide open sound, but very shallow so you can’t go Nelly free anywhere you like. LOTS OF ACTIVITY Again we stick with the marked path. We have to pay attention and don’t do much sightseeing as we begin to every so often crab out of the lane. Wow, I just saw a really exotic large black bird with a patch of red and white on its head flying way over head. I’m pretty sure it’s a sand hill crane. I tried to get a picture but he was too high and flying off in another direction. Wonder what the heck he was? The wildlife is so abundant here. There are hundreds of little white birds flying in groups off to our starboard side. They are circling in mass like one big flying herring ball above the water. Pelicans are dive bombing right and left from us and osprey are perched one after another on top of the markers each seemingly with a big catch. What fun to see so much wildlife as you cruise. SAIL UP? WHO’S GOT THE RIGHT AWAY? Hey, what’s this idiot doing? Up ahead is a sailboat very partially under sail. He just has a sparsely reefed sail, which I’m sure he only had up to claim “I have the right away.” That little snippet of a sheet isn’t giving him any wind lift. It’s totally ridiculous and dangerous in this narrow channel to be under sail and expecting people to abide by him. He’s coming straight at us on our side of the channel. We continue on our path thinking he will switch over. Maybe he doesn’t see us? Larry starts to grumble about all sail boaters at this point and “stupid rule” of right of way under sail and finally makes a quick last minute turn to port to miss him. We’re now on the wrong side of the channel. Hey guess what? This idiot now turns and heads toward us again on the other side of the channel! Larry moves over again to quickly avoid him. What the hell is he doing? As we go by he gives us a dirty look and I give him an equally weird look, shrugging my shoulders with hands and arms up on each side. We didn’t have a clue as to what he thought he was doing. Idiot!
STILT HOUSES We see houses built on stilts off to our starboard side in the distance between us and Pine Island. They are just stuck in the middle of the sound with no land around. They were built in the late 1890’s by the Punta Gorda Fish Company. They were to house the fishermen working sound. Some were used as ice houses. They fished the sound for mullet using nets and would store fish in the ice stilt houses. When they had to move to other locations the fish company would bring in barges and flank each side of a building with a barge at low tide and insert planks underneath lodging the ends on the barges. Once this was done they would wait for high tide when the tide would literally do all the work lifting the houses off the stilts. The barges then moved the ice houses to the next location and waited until the low tide dropped the buildings down on the next set of stilts. Pretty ingenious huh? Many of these old building are still there as we saw a hand full. They are a little peak into the fishing history of this area. CABBAGE AND DOGS DON’T MIX The ICW makes a jog at this point between two islands. One is lovely Useppa Island where we stayed last year for a few days and across the way is Cabbage Island. We thought we might stop for lunch at Cabbage Island today. As we neared the island, Larry hailed Cabbage Island marina and asked about docking for lunch. They had room for us at the dock. Larry then asked what their policy was about dogs as we’d heard they weren’t very dog friendly. The dock master said there was a specific area where dogs were allowed to go potty but they weren’t allowed elsewhere. We decided to pass on lunch at Cabbage today. We didn’t feel like sticking Ziggy in the cage after cruising for two hours. So maybe we’ll stop, another time. Once we passed these islands we see a beautiful light house at the end of Gasparilla Island. We’re planning to go there during the break between the holidays. Wow, it looks like a neat place! We make a turn to our starboard leaving the ICW again and head into Charlotte Harbor which I think should be called a Sound because of its size. We are suddenly free of all the markers and can relax a bit. Charlotte Harbor is an incredibly big stretch of water and it seemed like it took us forever to get to the top of it. I can see how this body of water could really wretch up in some winds. Today though, it is nice and calm. DEAD FISH? We saw a dead fish float by us, then another, and another. I pointed it out to Larry. He said he’d been seeing them for some time while I was taking a break. Soon we saw more and it just continued mile after mile for as far as we could see. What is going on? Is there something bad in the water? It was worrisome but we had no answer. It’s very sad to see something hundreds of dead fish. Very scary. PUNTA GORDA PUBLIC MARINA Well, here we are at our next home for a couple of weeks. We’re staying here until after the holidays. We decided to plop someplace for the holidays and bring the car over from La Belle where we had the boat stored so that we could explore a bit of Florida by car this time. We researched several options and decided this place offered the most in the way of conveniences for us. So we headed under the bridge at HWY 41 and made a quick turn to starboard and in to our new slip. The harbor master was very friendly. The place is very new and clean. We didn’t expect to see a nice new restaurant called the Crab House overlooking the harbor too and the best part is that it’s dog friendly. OK this will work. We’re in. On to DRIVING AROUND
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