Sailing on the Gulf
01 March 2011 | Shell Point, FL
We have finally left Naples! It turned out to be one of those boat-friendly places where time just seems to go by and actually departing takes more oomph than normal. We only intended to stay one night when we pulled in, but then Anne and I went for a morning walk and stumbled into a great Farmers Market where we restocked on produce, and there was an arts festival we wanted to check out, and then we said hello to some other Canadian boaters and ended up getting together on their boat for evening beverages...finally we just rented a car and used it to do a major re-provisioning and to drive up to the Ft. Myers airport to retrieve Evelyn: She came back and slept so long that we stayed *another* day!
We did finally leave, and motored out into the Gulf of Mexico, put up our sails, and had the most spectacular day of sailing. The water was gorgeous, the boat was on its favorite point of sail, the dolphins were out in large numbers and having fun frisking off our bow. We sailed all the way up into San Carlos Bay before dropping our sails as we got into narrow channels and needed to pass under a bridge. By then, the weather was no longer so friendly-looking and we tucked ourselves into a sheltered anchorage. We had hardly gotten the engine turned off when it started to spatter and, by the time we got the halyards secured and the sail cover on, it was dumping rain. A timely anchorage.