We are back in the settled/developed parts of Florida. After four days of sailing and anchoring during which we saw virtually no man-made structures other than the occasional channel marker and very few other boats, we sailed up the coast and joined a veritable parade of boats beading past condo towers, private mansions and roadways to tie up in a marina with hundreds of boats around...

And what a sail it was! As soon as we got clear of the narrow channels between the islands, we put up our sails and had a very nice close reach around the shoals off of Cape Romano with a small detour to rescue what turned out to be a large collection of Valentine's Day balloons floating on the water: We popped them all and put them in the garbage. Once we made the turn around the shoals, our course was almost directly downwind so I set our whisker pole before going below to begin my workday, and Anne and Leslie sailed us downwind for hours as the beaches slipped by. It was gorgeous.

Somewhat unexpectedly, these last four days coming from Key West have been the most sustained exploration of our entire cruise. We weren't following the ICW, or sailing familiar waters, every night was in a remote anchorage, the water colors and scenery were spectacular, and there was so much wildlife. We stopped counting the dolphins we saw but we had dozens come and surf our bow wave, Leslie saw close to ten sea turtles, collected shells on an empty (of people) beach, paddled with the alligators, and we all saw more insects than we cared to know about!

But, as we motored through the canals into Naples with our holding tank full and our refrigerator empty, we were all happy to be coming into port. It turns out that there is a big arts festival here this weekend so I think we'll probably stay a couple of days to enjoy it.