Nearly one week to the hour Caya arrived at Legacy Harbor Marina in Fort Myers Florida. We chose Legacy because our friends have a Fleming 55 there and we have spent some time there and it's a few blocks walk to the old downtown Fort Myers which is full or bars and restaurants, a block from the grocery and a few more blocks west is the beautiful Ford and Edison Winter Estates.

The marina is all floating and has great people running it and amenities including a small reasonable price hotel if we're to have any guests that think a 35' might be a bit small.

Caya arrived in one piece as did the crew with little more happen than 130 gallons of diesel burned and about 144 hours added to the engine. The crew was ever thankful for the full enclosure on the Bimini that Caya had. I had in fact just added the last stern part a few days before they left Kemah. Many thanks to Trent and Chris and the crew at Banks Sails/North canvas
http://www.bankssailstx.com/ For getting it all done in time.

Capt Bill and Richard left that night and our friend, Joe Copeland, stayed till Tuesday. Liz and I flew in Sunday taking the early flight out of Hobby and even after a short layover in Atlanta we were at the boat by 1230.

Joe met us and had cleaned up the boat. We got some lunch and hit the Publix for provisioning and just had a great evening with Joe catching up as we had not seen him in a long time.

Monday 11/16
After a nice breakfast we bid Joe farewell and untied Caya and headed down the ocheechobee river (aka the ICW) and we're headed for 'Tween Waters Marina on Sanibel Island.

A note, we also chose to stay at Legacy Harbour Marina because we could get Caya's 51'-5" mast under the two (average) 54' bridges.

We ended up motoring all the way to 'Tween Waters and as we pulled off red ICW Mark #38 for the entrance to the Roosevelt channel about 4pm,mthe Harbormaster was nice enough to call and see if we were still coming!

We ended up a side tie on their long dock and with the east to northeast breeze I was glad we had the extra fenders and fender board necessary to keep her off the fixed pier in the breeze and 2' tides.

'Tween Waters is a resort with a marina and has one of the prettiest beaches you will find on the west coast of Florida. Liz likened it to one of those resorts from the 50-60s that whole families came and spent 2-3 weeks at. It has in fact been around since the 30s.

One of the restaurants on site has the infamous crab races which they have been doing since the mid 80s. We lucked into the 6pm race and it was highly entertaining. Especially since my crab "Seabiscuit" won first place and I got all the prizes! We've heard the 9pm adults only race is even more entertaining.

We got up Tuesday morning and out the dink in the water and the motor on and took a sightseeing trip up the channel in search of manatees and we found 3 that were feeding in one area and stopped to watch them. They are just neat creatures.

Back to the boat and we rented bikes to bike into "town" and had lunch at a place on the water.

Wednesday we got up and went the 5 miles up to Cabbage Key and anchored where we have before with some other friends. Active Captain says there is room for 4-5 boats but there were 5-6 when we got there and we were probably the 7th. But we managed to get pretty far in and maybe too close to the mangroves because the No See Um's were out after dark in the light air.

We dingyed into Cabbage for drinks and lunch, walked the nature trail on the island paying attention to the snake and alligator warnings and headed back to the boat. We watched a great sunset and went in when the bugs come out. Watched a movie and were probably out by 10 with little to no motion as no one was transiting the ICW after dark.

Thursday AM, we noticed a few boats leaving and a few more replaced them and we had hardly moved on the anchor (you gotta love a 45# Rocna and all chain rode). We got a few projects done and hit the dingy for a little water touring of Useppa Island (all private) and decided to hit Cabbage again for lunch, post another $1 bill on the wall with our name and date and head back for a relaxig afternoon on the boat. But not before we did we ventured a bit further by water around Cabbage. We decided to head back before it got too late and enjoy the rest of the day and I was wanting to see if the dingy would plane with us both in it so Liz was in the very front and I was trying to get further forward and it was doing ok for an 8hp but I decided it wasn't worth the noise and it wouldn't plane out so I idled it back and that is when it DIED! And it would NOT restart not matter what I did.

Having had this issue before and having had this motor checked by two honda dealers I was fairly hacked off. And I'm looking at the Caya at anchor about a mile and half away and we even have to cross the ICW to get there.

Fortunately I did have oars so out they came. Then we figured out they needed to be extended. Then we figured out how to pin them in the locks which seem to flex a bit as they are just part of the inflatable tubes and of course once in a while they would slip in some way and "lock up" causing the oar to not be moved till it was unstuck and then the rowing (and cussing) would begin again.

Rowing a RIB is at best a test of time and patience. It really is the last resort because they don't track well, they rotate easily if you pull one oar harder than the other and the wind and current can just push you all over. In fact most the time we were rowing the wrong direction to account for the wind pushing us towards our destination.

Now Liz offered to row also and I should have let her some or at least let her row one side while I did the other but NO I had to do it all myself so we rowed for what seemed about an hour but was probably 20 mins and we managed to get across the ICW without any boats hitting us and as we got closer to the other side of the ICW a fellow boater at anchor saw us and came over in his dink and gave us a tow to Caya which was great because I was beat and being out of the lee of Cabbage and in open water the wind was pushing us north and it was going to take a lot more effort to keep us going towards the boat.

So we tied up the dingy, thanked our new friend (who had an Elite 37 (I think) and was from Tampa and comes to Cabbage for a week every November) and had a drink while I thought about undoing that honda and dropping it over the side.

We were planning to leave in the AM and head back to Legacy Harbor and enjoy some of downtown Fort Myers (and the boat show was going on that weekend), so we decided to get the outboard off and dingy back on the davits that evening. Several times while hoisting it back up I was tempted to just cut the line and go by a new 9.9 Yamaha, but I had some dying conviction that I had spent money on this Honda and it supposedly had low hours and should be running fine. But it had been at the shop TWICE. It was like when you take your car to the dealer because it's doing something but when it's there it never does it.

Friday Morning we left by 9am and got back to Legacy by about 2pm not really getting to sail much but it's a fairly easy motor up the ICW and the River.

Fridays in downtown Fort Myers there is always something going on, either an art or music festival every other weekend and this was the music night. It was great. They block off the streets and it's just a musician on every corner with everyone playing and tons of people.

Saturday we went to the Fort Myers boat show that was also within walking distance to the marina and it was a huge show compared to the size of Fort Myers. We found an old broker friend of mine, Dan Howland, who used to work with me at Sea Lake Yachts in Kemah at one time before he moved to the west coast of Florida some years ago.

Sunday morning was an early flight out, thru Atlanta and we were back in Kemah before noon!