The fog let up about an hour out and the rest of the trip was beautiful. Good winds!! It would have been perfect if we did not have so many crab pots. Since Nate and Joann had never been to Marco Island--they followed us in to Smokehouse Bay.
After we anchored, we dinghied over to Nate and Joann's boat and introduced ourselves but we felt like we knew them already. I have been following their blog--"Chasing 70"and are on their way down from Michigan. They are planning to do the loop. We told them what little we know about Marco. Then we went over to another boat that anchored near Elsie--the new boat is named "Invincible". It turned out to be a family of 7 on a 44 foot Morgan Out Island -- plus a cat and dog. Ruth, the wife, has more sailing experience than her husband Mark. It was Mark who wanted to sell everything and go sailing, they did! He asked Tom if they could get together with us in order to pick Tom's brain. They came over to our boat about 2:00 and left about 5:00. They were taking notes all the time. Mark made the comment that boaters are willing to share knowledge and hands on experience to fix a problem. They also have a blog--"invincibleadventure.com" We asked them--how did they find Smokehouse Bay--they said we followed you all in.
After we went out to do some shopping and lunch--we noticed a sailboat we saw the last time we were there called "Grendel". It turned out that the owners name is Herman and he was part of the team that took the condo and home owners to court to allow anchoring in Smokehouse Bay and won. They had cruised over 10 years and now live on Marco Island. Very nice person. He told us to keep coming, stay as long as we wanted and enjoy the peacefulness of the area.