Great Loop & Cruising Adventure Blog

Florida Keys – here we come!

We had a relatively smooth cruise  across Florida Bay to Marathon today. Vivid blue skies and turquoise water.

We were so happy to meet up with all of our cruising buddies at 1 Palm Court (Sombrero Marina). We had to anchor out in Hawks Channel since Marathon is a busy place this time of year and we couldn’t get a slip or even a mooring ball. So we dinghied in to Sombrero for a big breakfast at 1 Palm Court.

Due to very unpredictable weather lately and having to pick our weather days to move along our route we had to move quickly through the Everglades. This was disappointing for us as this is one of our favorite places. Tonight we anchored out near Indian Key. It was calm as could be tonight and we hope the weather holds for our trip to Marathon tomorrow.

From Fort Myers Beach we took the outside route to an anchorage just outside of the Naples harbor right in the middle of some amazing million dollar homes.

On Tuesday we moved to the Naples City Dock’s mooring field for a three day visit to catch up on some work and to visit with some friends from home who have rented a house down here for the winter.

Our friends Gary and Carol (below), from Traverse City, picked us up on Tuesday for a road tour of the area and lunch at their place.

Yes, that’s our dinghy there, the one in the middle. Pete the pelican and his pals have decided to excercise their squatters rights over the dinghy dock.

After three days of extremely windy and cold weather we left Fort Myers Beach at day break, in relative calm waters, for the run to Naples.

First order of business when we arrived in the Fort Myers Beach harbor was to take on some fuel at Ballards (below). Jim enjoyed talking to the attendant, he had a lot of boating stories to tell.

Next we had to grab a mooring ball to tie up to for the next three days.

Our Looper friends Charlie and Linda, Freedom’s Turn, joined us for a night, they are traveling down south from Michigan visiting all the Looper friends they met on their trip last year. We were glad they included us on the list. Dinner was at Doc Ford’s.

We met Tom & Jan Mertz, Monique, by email yesterday and planned to meet in person for lunch at the Parrot Key Caribbean Grill. They are future Loopers, in the planning stages and wanted to meet us to gather information about some questions and concerns they had. We hope we were able to help it’s always fun to be of help to other boaters.

A peaceful afternoon and evening in the right outside of Tarpon Point Marina. Tomorrow we head for Fort Myers Beach to wait out some predicted windy weather and to meet up with some friends.

We’re at Tarpon Point Marina in Cape Coral today for a reunion with some boater friends that we have not seen in awhile. They have rented a condo here so we decided to stay at the marina for the night to visit with them. As you can see from the photos it is a very nice marina.