We have reached our "summer home" (Posted April 22, 2009)

After spending four days anchored in the cove in Naples waiting for the cold front to pass by, we weighed anchor and motored out Gordons Pass to the Gulf. Since the wind was very light we had to motor north and up the Caloosahatchee River (about 30 miles) to anchor in Bimini Basin in Cape Coral, one of our favorite anchorages. It is a totally enclosed and protected cove at the end of a canal with a beautiful little park at one end and nice condos surrounding it. There is a public dock for our dinghy at the park. Within a mile in each direction from the park there is a laundromat, two supermarkets, a West Marine store, an ice cream parlor (Linda's favorite amenity in any harbor!!!), etc. The only drawback is lack of a water supply at the dock so we hauled water in jerry jugs from a water dispensing machine a couple of blocks away to replenish our supply. A bit of work but worth it for an otherwise perfect place to stay. We stayed for a week and our friends, Roger and Sylvia, who live in North Fort Myers came one day to take us to a nice restaurant in a new shopping/restaurant/condo/yacht club complex. A couple on another boat in the anchorage asked us one evening to go ashore for ice cream with them (no complaint from Linda on that!!). :-)

Just so you don't think cruising and living on a boat is always all "fun and games", one day the handle broke on the toilet slide valve (toilet was new, only six months old! Shit!!). The toilet was, of course, still under warrantee. BUT, there are no plumbers to come to your boat and fix or replace things! SO, I had to remove it (I will spare you a full description of this part, but believe me it is not fun!!! Yuck!!), tie it up in trash bags, we took it ashore in the dinghy, put it on our luggage cart, hauled it a mile to the West Marine store, got a new one for free, hauled it back to the boat and I installed it! NOT as much fun as sailing or relaxing in the cockpit watching dolphins!!!!!

On April 15th we weighed anchor and headed out of the Caloosahatchee River headed west and north in Pine Island Sound which is between the mainland and the barrier islands of Sanibel, Captiva, Cayo Costa and Gasparilla. We anchored the first night between Ussepa Island and Cabbage Key, beautiful, dolphins put on a show for us (OK, forget the toilet, it IS all fun and games!!) :-). After two more days, anchored in a different harbor each night, on April 18th we arrived at our "summer home" and anchored in the anchorage in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island.

As we arrived in the harbor, lots of antique, wooden, classic and other unusual small sailboats were having a regatta/race as part of a small boat festival so we had a great time watching and admiring all the boats.

We will settle in here for awhile and use this as our home base for the summer as we cruise this part of the coast from Sarasota to Clearwarer. We are looking forward to seeing all of our friends and relatives who live in this area while we are here. Linda's son, Rob, is coming here in August from the Czech Republic, so we are excited and looking forward to that!

We will update the blog again soon. We hope everyone reading this has a great summer!