Category: 2015 West Coast Florida Trip

We happily guessed right about the weather for our return trip.  Not perfect by a long shot.  Kept our eye on storms on the horizon, monitoring their approaches on the radar.  One did catch up with us, but no lightning in sight near or far.  The winds really kicked up the following day and only got worse on Monday.  It was nice to be safely moored.

Looks like rain to me!

Here it comes!

Right in our path.  It rained for about a third of the 100 mile trip home.  A nice softwater rinse for the boat at journey’s end 🙂

 

We took an inside route back to Marco Island.  Although not part of the official ICW, this stretch of water was well marked, albeit a bit skinny in a couple of places.Because of the depth, very few cruisers come this way.  We enjoyed the solitude and calmness of the waters.  A beautiful morning.

We liked the marina at the Esplanade so much we didn’t even research other options. The dockmaster there (Joe) was, again, very helpful. The boaters’ lounge and showers are as nice as any we saw on this trip.

This time we ventured outside the Esplanade facility into Marco Island. A short walk brought us to Arturo’s — a wonderful Italian restaurant not too far off the beaten track.  Wonderful service and good food.  We saved room for a double scoop from the ice cream store at the Esplanade.  Yum.

Sun sparkles on the inside waterway to Marco Island from Naples.

Lots of osprey nests along the way.

 

Left Boca Grande with some windy weather so we decided to take the inside route (ICW) and when than ran out, we hugged the coastline. Naples Yacht Club is on the Gordon River and the entrance from the Gulf is pretty direct. We were met immediately with gorgeous homes vying for the nicest water views. Fort Lauderdale has nothing on Naples! It might be the economy or just that there are more open lots available, but there definitely was a building boom going on.

Cleo and Jim arrived with lunch!  And then we moved to Jim and Cleo’s condo in the Wilderness (more about that in a minute). A treat for Ann and Cliff was to get off Dot.Calm and sleep in a real bed!  Dinner at Naples Yacht Club that night was terrific with Cliff declaring he had the best grouper ever.

We hosted a sunset cruise on our second night in Naples with Cleo and Jim, Cleo’s dad Ed and his friend Peggy and Wilderness and Glen Ellyn friends George and Nina. The water in the Gulf was very bound-y, so Cliff opted to anchor in a protected spot just off the main waterway. We got to see lots of boats cruise by and to think smugly of the rocky ride ahead of them. And we had a perfect view of the sunset.

Staying at the Wilderness is like walking back in time. You turn off a busy road and you immediately encounter a landscape of old, beautiful trees, lush plantings, peaceful ponds and narrow winding roads. The widely spaced condo enclaves seem an afterthought. Cleo and Jim have a pond view and a wonderful array of birdlife. An eagle has taken up residence in a far tree, but we did not see him/her. We did spot osprey, woodpeckers, blue buntings, yellow bellied sapsuckers, heron, anhinga, cormorants, kingfishers and a couple of unidentified small songbirds that migrate through the area at this time of year.

From Boca Grande, the view from the port side of boat once you are in the Gulf is pretty much this the whole way.

The starboard view is also constant….non-stop development all along the coast.

Beautiful homes crowd the shore as you enter Gordon River toward the Naples mooring areas.

Mornings spent on the patio with amazing variety of avian visitors and an alligator or two!

Enjoying the bridge deck with friends!

A beautiful sunset enhanced with clouds and silhouettes of boats.

A stop at the Ritz Carlton beach bar for a margarita.  Yum.

Sunset view from Jim and Cleo’s patio.  Wow.

Can you spot the alligator?!

Never got a shot of us actually in the golf cart, but we enjoyed a day of riding the full length of Gasparilla Island.  A beautiful spot.  No wonder the Boca Grande-ians are so protective of it!

Here is the Boca Grande lighthouse with a gorgeous sky above. Alas, we arrived 15 minutes after closing time and the lady in charge was definitely not going to make an exception for us!

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This rustic chapel is actually near a parking lot.  I imagine that girls who grow up in Boca Grande (there is a school here) dream of having their weddings here.  I imagine a tent set up in the parking lot could accommodate nearly the whole permanent population of island.

Cliff splashing in the late afternoon in beautiful Gulf waters.

Boca Grande’s version of Stonehenge?  Actually, the remains of a ruined dock.

Cliff walking toward the Gulf from the park surrounding the lighthouse,

Happy Ann returning from our Boca Grande tour (Dot.Calm in the background) a bit windswept from the open golf cart!

Nestled in the towel….a treasure trove of shells from the Gulf shore.  The one at the upper left is called a “slipper shell” and is nearly translucent.  The small shell directly below it looks as if it was made to be a piece of jewelry.

 

A sort of dreary day for our trip across Charlotte Harbor to Boca Grande.  We dithered about whether to stay in Punta Gorda because of the wind (and the wonderful hospitality) but wanted to have some time to explore Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island.  Cliff conferred several times with the BG dock master Susan and we ended up leaving late in the morning.  The trip is fairly short and it was, as they say, blowing like stink once we got there.  Susan and her dock helpers made our landing as easy as possible.  We were surprised that Boca Grande marina is small….not grande at all.  Miller’s Landing, the on-site casual restaurant, was a perfect spot for an early dinner.  And a GIANT hot fudge sundae for dessert!

A mangrove across from our mooring had a resident osprey who seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time in this dead tree perch.  His/her nest was about 50 yards away.

A moody sky was our backdrop on the first afternoon in Boca Grande.

We are staying at the Isles Yacht Club. After being helped by an extremely friendly dockhand and having ice delivered by the dock master, we were then visited by a yacht club member bearing a plate of brownies (yum), a Meyer lemon and Key lime off her tree and a stack of information about the club and the community.  Wow!  Setting a high bar for hospitality.  Today we walked into town to see a watercolor exhibition at the local arts center where our friend Roger Parent took third prize AND was named a Master Watercolorist this past week — there are only 4 in his group of 200 painters.  While we were there, the friendly person at the front desk entered us into a drawing for “grab bags” of goodies as part of a crafts show that was also going on.  I won!  I am wondering if it was rigged?  From there, we walked another mile to the weekly farmers’ market in the downtown area.  Small and charming with a couple of produce stands and lots of booths with goodies ranging from jams and jellies, pickles and handcrafts to oodles of mushroom varieties, artwork and cupcakes.  I got four of the most beautiful tomatoes I’ve seen in a while for $3!  We strolled through Fisherman’s Village on the way back to the yacht club and found a nice restaurant overlooking Charlotte Harbor plus some shops to explore (and spend!)  Tonight, we are going to a special jazz dinner at the yacht club.  What a nice day.

The Isles Yacht Club set a new standard for hospitality.  It is a robust club with a great facility — rebuilt in 2006 after Hurricane Charley destroyed their old clubhouse.  In addition to a nice dock area, they have tennis courts, a pool, a billiards room, an elegant restaurant, a grill room and bar.  Cruiser amenities include showers, lending library, loaner bikes and kayaks.

The view from the front of our mooring.

Four beautiful tomatoes for $3!  What a deal.

The goodies in the goody bag I won at a raffle at the Arts Center.  Notecards, a glass Christmas tree ornament and pink glass earrings.

Maybe I could move here?  Punta Gorda has made a wonderful impression.  And the condominiums down the street from the yacht club certainly has the right name!

Getting from Sarasota to Punta Gorda, our next stop, isn’t as easy as you’d think.  We decided to travel in the Gulf rather than re-trace our ICW path, so you head north for a bit and then make a sort of U-turn to the south.  And right at the spot where you make the U-turn there is serious shoaling.  When I saw the sign that said “Resume Local Navigation” I knew we were in trouble….we never saw the first sign that said local navigation had started!  Captain Cliff did a great job in slowly getting us into a channel deep enough to get us out into the Gulf and into deep water.  Punta Gorda is at the northeast end of Charlotte Harbor — a large, but shallow body of water which is reached via a narrow channel from the Gulf.  The dock master here told us that when they get several days of easterly winds, the water gets very, very skinny.  I’m hoping we are out of here before that happens!

We departed The Field Club around 8am with unusual clouds.  The cloud cover was welcome as our route took us right into the sun.

Very, very skinny water getting out of Sarasota and into deeper Gulf waters.

Once we were safely in the Gulf….a perfect time for a champagne breakfast!

A couple of hours of cleaning (the normal arrival routine) wraps up with Cliff putting in the newly cleaned isinglass.  Tried a new product and it worked perfectly.

Took advantage of being at The Field Club and explored the building (it’s one of the National Historic Buildings) and grounds.  Also walked to a nearby West Marine….with a mission of getting two cotter pins and ending up with a rolling cooler and enough extra goodies to fill it.  The walk was through the neighborhood adjacent to The Field Club and the homes were more diverse than we expected.  A couple definitely needed some TLC, but most were lovely older homes with well tended landscapes.  We met some other cruisers when we went to the swimming pool.  Once couple from Bradenton and the other from Hinsdale, IL (!)  Nice conversations about the cruising life, which they’d done plenty of.  Dinner with Roger and Will…jackets required.  See funny story about this below.

Huge stag horn fern in one of the live oaks on the 18 acre Field Club property.  There were several of these around the property, but this was the biggest.

Trekking back from West Marine.

Sunset view from The Field Club docks

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A walk through this courtyard leads you to the dining room entrance.

Dinner with Roger and Will.  Jackets required in the dining room we selected.  No jackets required in the “upstairs” dining room….approximately 5 steps above the jackets-required area.  Would have loved to be at the meeting where that distinction was decided upon.

Our next stop, Sarasota, is just a quick hop from Venice.  So we made the trip nice and slow, admiring the beautiful homes along the ICW.  A couple were eye-popping, and I’ve included them in the photo gallery below. You can tell we are getting into civilization. Lots of bridges and none of them high enough for us to get under.  We are moored at The Field Club, a yacht club that was founded by one of Marshal Field’s sons.  He married a Palmer.  (This connection is much more interesting for our Chicago friends….let’s just say it was a marriage made in an investment office.)  The club is on 18 acres of loveliness.  The clubhouse itself is a Spanish style building with an interior courtyard, replete with burbling fountain.  The pool here is kept at a constant temperature of 85 degrees…heated in winter, cooled in summer.  In Marathon, our pool gets to 90+ degrees in the summer — definitely not refreshing.  The Field Club does have rules….long pants for men and women (even for lunch), shirts with collars for men, jackets required in the dining room in the evening.  Thank goodness they gave up on ties a couple of years ago (Cliff has neither a tie, nor a shirt that would be appropriate with one).  The formality is actually pretty nice.  As we finished lunch, a group of older women began to talk (loudly) about last night’s Republican debate (hooray for Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina, boo for John Kasich and Ben Carson).  I was glad we were done with lunch and sorry that I didn’t have an extra glass (or two) of wine 🙂

Believe it or not, this is a photo, not a painting.  I snapped the picture as we went through a bridge passage and spotted the pelican perched very comfortably on a very thin cord.

The stately Field Club

Dot.Calm in Slip #2

Our approach to The Field Club…I don’t think we’ll fit!

Egrets perching in the mangroves.  A familiar sight to us in the Keys.

And who doesn’t do a little dreaming as they cruise the ICW.  This incredible house was built on a peninsula.  We couldn’t figure out how they would get a car to it.  Didn’t see a garage or a driveway.  Maybe they helicopter in?

It is almost axiomatic….take out your windshield and you are sure to encounter bad weather.  And so it was with us.  (Note to self:  NEXT time look at the radar beforehand.)  We no sooner departed Sanibel Marina than we ran into a heavy downpour.  We pushed through (and put in one-half of the windshield) and were soon rewarded with sunny skies for most of our trip north.  Venice Yacht Club is friendly and pretty.  A taxi ride into town gave us plenty of time to shop (I am sure the Venice economy has moved a couple of notches up) and have dinner at Ristorante San Marco, an Italian place we happened into with Roger and Will a couple of years ago.  Food delicious.  Proprietor solicitous.  A great evening.

Rain all across the horizon….and no windshield in place.

Half a windshield is better than no windshield at all….sort of.

We were treated to a view of a very large flock of white pelicans.  These are migratory birds in Florida which are quite different from their more common brown pelican relatives.  They feed more like ducks, floating in the water and using their bills to collect gulps of water which they then filter to get out the bits of vegetation and small sea life for a meal.

As we waited for one of the bridges to open, we saw a very dangerous crane maneuver.  Don’t try this at home.

The view from our Venice Yacht Club mooring.

The bar at the Venice Yacht Club overlooks the harbor….and serves terrific chicken wings!