The Green Green Grass of Home

To conclude a 75 nm run from Marco Island and our  Exumas Adventure, Eagle's Wings docked yesterday evening at our Lido house.  Constance and Bill , who were watching us come up Charlotte Harbor on SPOT, met us at the dock to welcome us home. 

The grass is green.  Flowers are blooming.  Our bed was comfortable. Now it is time to fix the broken boat stuff,  pull weeds, start the newspapers, etc.   Regular life....

After waiting out weather for one day at Dinner Key, we motor sailed down the Hawk Channel to anchor on the south side of Rodriguez Key, our depature point for the Bahamas almost 6 weeks ago.  Other than the reef on the ocean side of the Hawk Channel, we had no protection from the wind or waves.  Still we didn't bounce around as much as we did off Norman's Cay in the Exumas.  One long day followed another as we continued down the channel at 6 :30 AM on a broad reach with plenty of wind and a two to four foot following sea.  Conditions eased after we crossed under the Five Mile Bridge into Florida Bay.  Through a a few miles of the Florida Yacht Channel our sonar read 3.4 feet!  Tom said that we were reading a thin layer sand on top of grass and that the actual depth was 6 ft or deeper.  I didn't see a muddy trail behind the boat  Along the South Cape (Cape Sable), our wind went SE.  Through water that looked like a chaulky concoction of blue water and cement, one foot waves rolled under our stern. Occassionally a wave would break.  It was weird looking.  Gladly, we moved on to anchor in darker and quieter water south of Little Shark River for a peaceful night.

On the move again at first light, the end of another long day found us in a slip at the Marco Island Yacht Club.  We relaxed in the pool and took shore-side showers before a free taxi ride delivered us to the Snook Inn for dinner.  Shore food never tasted better!

I woke early to check the weather, tides and look at our route home.  When I looked down at the lower right-hand corner of the laptop screen, I was suprised to see that time had passed quickly; it was 6:17 AM.

Normally, Joanne takes her time rising from bed. Not this morning, she was up, and had coffee made for a 6:40 AM depature.  Cantagree and Blue Goose, after spending the night in Factory Bay, were already on the move just ahead of us.  Blue Goose headed for Fort Meyers for some minor boat repairs;  Cantagree and Eagle's Wings headed home. We picked up a hitch hiker off Naples who rode all the way to Sanibel with us. Check out our pictures to see him or her!  Off Sanibel the wind died around noon and went west just before we transited Rad Fish Pass.  Now we had a nice West wind for a ride up the ICW and up Charlotte Harbor.  Great to be home!

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