We had a little rain move through last night after dark, but it didn’t last long. This morning we pulled up anchor at 9 AM. It was a sunny, but breezier day which was great because the dew point and humidity were really high. We passed a lot of boats going north.
We’ve been keeping an eye on the tropical storm which formed in the Gulf near the Yucatan Peninsula yesterday. If it comes this way it will effect our weather on Monday or Tuesday, but hopefully we should be across the state by then. We want to beat the storm and cross Lake Okeechobee when we have good weather and calm seas. As we traveled south to Ft. Myers, the dolphins were plentiful today with a mom and her twin babies coming to surf in our wake. They are such playful creatures.
As we neared Cape Coral, we entered a stretch of water nicknamed the “miserable mile”–a narrow, slow no-wake zone a mile long where boat traffic gets pushed into a single file line in both directions. It’s like a giant boat parade.
As we slowly motored through the “miracle mile” we saw a floating bait store anchored there. It was quite a “quirky” structure.
Boat traffic picked up on this Friday as we neared Ft. Myers. We passed this tug, an unusual site here. It had just come through the Okeechobee Waterway and was headed west.
We stopped at the Ft. Myers Yacht Basin for the night. Before taking a slip, we fueled up and got pumped out. It was extremely hot and humid and we wanted to get tied up as soon as possible and get into the AC. We were tied up and settled in by 1:00.
We made plans to get together with our friends, Bernie and Barb, from Cape Coral for dinner tonight. They joined us on our boat for cocktails before dinner. Tonight was “Art Walk” on main street so we strolled along looking for a place to have dinner. We settled on Cabos Cantina and had a great Mexican meal.
Tomorrow we start crossing the state on the Caloosahatchee River which will take us through Lake Okeechobee and 5 locks in the next two days to Stuart on the East Coast.