Ft. Myers Beach to the Everglades

. . . SHE SAID/HE SAID

Jane writes:

People who know Kent know how much he likes to talk. So we had a near catastrophe in late November when we used all our cell phone minutes by Thanksgiving. If you didn’t hear from him then, that’s why. Almost our first stop in Ft. Myers Beach was the Verizon store to bump up our minutes.

(Please note: Jane’s use of our minutes was one less than a quarter of the total.)

Kent writes:

We grabbed #35 mooring ball at the Ft. Myers Beach City mooring field a little after noon Saturday, December 1, not knowing that we would be surrounded by the annual Christmas Parade of Boats that night. It was an amazing show of lights! They are hard to take pictures of, but were beautiful to see (if Jane hadn’t been busy watching Bama barely put the whoop-down on Georgia on TV).

Santa and his reindeer. Somewhere beneath them is a boat.

 This reindeer boat wishes everyone Merry Christmas.

A well-lighted sailboat leads Santa in the dinghy.

Jane writes:

Getting up early one morning, I saw pink-orange out of one port and the most amazing sunrise out the companionway. 

Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning. . . by the afternoon, it was raining.

Kent writes:

Ft. Myers Beach had a surprise in store for us – crows! Not gulls. Not pelicans. According to locals, about twice a year crows swarm the harbor area. One morning Jane got up early and heard the plucking of wires on the spreaders. Expecting laughing gulls or something similar, she found . . . crows! They swarmed like mosquitoes at daybreak and dusk. At times the skies were black with swarms of them. Bob and Trish got “Pelicaned”, we got “Crowed”.

Crows would land on all the sailboat spreaders and shrouds, then take off again.

We both write:

Ft. Myers Beach was a good stop. We reprovisioned, did laundry, took a tour of the island, mailed cards, slept late, found a tiny Christmas tree for the boat, and stayed in one town for more than two days! From there we sailed to Naples, staying at Hamilton Harbor Marina (actually a "yachty" yacht club that allows transients).

Hamilton Harbor Yacht Club and Marina featured its own mini-lighthouse

 at the entrance, here at sunset.

Best of all was when we entered the Ten Thousand Islands area on the western side of the Everglades. We found mangrove islands and our favorite American White Pelicans in flocks of 75+ birds on tide islands.

Mangrove trees form many of the islands in Ten Thousand Islands. Tide 

was out showing the root system of the trees.

White pelicans were flocked together on an island at the start 

of the channel to our anchorage.

It’s stunning! It looks like a fisherman’s paradise. It’s surely a nature lover’s paradise.

Next: Everglades City