DotCalm

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!

 

At least that’s the claim of the Lighthouse Cafe. Based on the number of people waiting for tables, it probably is the best in this part of the world. We walked there from the marina — only about a quarter mile. Along the way we saw and heard an osprey, encountered a “gopher tortoise crossing” sign (the first I’ve ever seen) and enjoyed the lush landscaping all along the way. A sea hibiscus reminded us of the huge tree that used to dominate our side yard. (Alas, the rain and wind of Hurricane Georges brought it down.)
Today is a dinghy day, motoring from the marina to a spectacular beach. We’ve been impressed with the edge of white sand beaches all along the gulf as we cruised into Marco Island and for nearly the entire distance from Marco to Sanibel. A swim in the Gulf is refreshing and a perfect way to spend an afternoon.  A close encounter (10 feet away!) with a dolphin was a bit of a shock….especially since Cliff had just casually mentioned “to be on the look out for sharks.”

An osprey we spotted on the walk to breakfast.  Must have been resting between fishing trips.  Not a bit of water in his view from this pitch pine perch.

Now, here’s something you don’t see every day.  Didn’t spot any of the critters tho.

Dinghy safely tucked ashore while we swim.

Looks as though we have this spot to ourselves.  Not really the case.  Lots of people and boats….plus birds, fish and a dolphin!

I’d heard that Sanibel was a shell collector’s dream.  Amazing number of shells across the entire beach line.  Did you ever wonder what happened to the animals that were in the shells?

One of the canals we cruised through.  Very different from Marco Island and most of the other Florida beach communities we’ve visited.  Beautiful homes behind the mangroves, but obviously, these folks aren’t boaters!

Our last passage headed back to the marina….looked very narrow, but we made it!

 

A very cozy spot with just a few slips for transients like us. We are on the east side of Sanibel Island. The restaurant at the marina has the unfortunate name of “Gramma Dot’s” but the food was terrific and imaginative. Pompano is not on the menu at many places and was deliciously prepared. Bacon-wrapped scallops also very good. Oddly, every meal is served with a fruit salad nestled in a small shell-shaped chocolate bowl (sorry, no photo of this!)

Pretty greeting at car entrance to the marina.  Back end of the restaurant and a fuel dock greets boaters.

View from our mooring.  That sand bar creates a very, very, very narrow entrance to the marina location.  All of the guidebooks warn boaters about it, but seeing is definitely believing!

View from the front of the boat.  Blue roof is Gramma Dot’s restaurant. Lots of great cooking aromas come with the mooring!

Spent a terrific day with Jim and Cleo. Driving from Naples, Jim reports there were about 30 lights, none of them timed. Took 45 minutes to go a fairly short distance!  They could definitely learn a thing or two from Roosevelt Road.  Cleo and Ann did some damage at the shops (70% off!!) and Cliff and Jim enjoyed some football game watching from the upper deck. Then a dinghy ride to take a look at houses and boats.  Later we had dinner at Chop239 — two nights in a row for Ann and Cliff, it was that good. A torrential rain storm blasted the area just as we were finishing dinner. Not a problem. We waited it out by ordering just one more glass of wine. A nice fresh water rinse for Dot.Calm.

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View to the front seat of the dinghy.  A lovely ride to look at pretty homes and boats.  Marco Island is pretty homogeneous.  Not much variation in homes or boats.

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Hmmm.  Another dinner photo.  This is Marco Island….not Italy, not Ireland.  You can tell from our tans.