We have about a 37 nautical mile run today so we headed out at 9:35am enroute to Charlotte Bay Harbor, our new homeport! About half an hour into our trip we started to hoist the main (by "we" I mean, of course, 'Bob') and it jammed. I mean really jammed. It took several tries to wrap and unwrap the main (about thirty minutes) and turning in and out of the wind to get the sail free. Ugh!

Winds were on the nose the whole time, despite weather forecasts indicating westerly breezes which would have put us on a beam reach. So we motorsailed the entire trip. It was interesting to enter Charlotte Bay from the Gulf because there is a shoal in the middle of the harbor so you have to stay close to the shore which of course always makes me a little nervous. We entered the inlet and turned right to anchor just off of Cayo Costa island, a national park. We set the hook at 4:10pm and got settled in for the evening. Another sailboat was attempting to anchor just ahead of us but could not get his hook to set. Not sure what the problem was because our set right away. The other boat had two small kids aboard with one of them she couldn't have been more than 7 years old) on the bow helping her daddy with the anchor. Talk about getting an education!

The next day we decided to head over to the island after lunch and go exploring. After arriving by dinghy, we paid our $2.00 per person fee (honor system - you put the money in the box by the dock) and headed to the visitor center for a map of the island. The volunteer suggested we take the middle of three trails (called the "Cemetery" trail) to get to the northernmost point. She said we were in for a pretty view of the water and lots of shells for picking. The map indicated a 1.6 mile hike. That was ok with us. So at about 2:30pm we headed on our way and decided to walk rather than bike.

The trail took us through lots of island palms and brush. We noticed after a while there were no birds around. Kind of strange. After another while we realized the trail kept winding back and forth like a serpentine. Bob commented that the walk was taking longer than we thought and began to suspect that the mileage was measured as the crow flies. It certainly seemed much longer than we expected. On the way to the point Bob spotted a rat snake about 5 feet long sunbathing on the side of the trail. Thankfully I didn't see it before it went into the brush. The point was very beautiful with a flock of white egrets roaming the beach and beautiful shells lining the shores. It was getting late so we decided to take a short cut back....which didn't work out so well. We ran into a blockage that wouldn't allow us to cross over around the point so we had to double back. The trail seemed even longer on the way back and this time I spotted a rat snake and screamed my lungs out. I ran so fast Bob had a hard time catching up to me. And when we slowed our pace we still had quite a ways to walk!

We finally saw the main road and turned left to get back to the visitor's area and finally back to the docks.

On our third day on anchor we took the dinghy to the "lagoon" just off the north point and beached it. We walked along the beach and enjoyed seeing five starfish resting on the sandy bottom as well as a couple of dolphin swimming close to shore. We spent quite a bit of time shelling and found some interesting ones to take back to the boat. After a few hours we headed back in the dinghy and decided to cross the anchorage to the other shoreline. It was a fun day exploring and we finished up with a quiet dinner aboard the boat. Tomorrow we sail to our homeport of Cape Haze and put 4mySanity in her new slip.