January 16-17 Ft. Meyers Beach

If you will recall, Connor & Allison, our grandchildren rode with us for the first 3 weeks of our trip. Since that was a special time for us, Matt & Janna, their Mom & Dad, surprised us with a special Christmas present. They took pictures and excerpts from the blog during that time and through the Shutterfly website published it as a book. It even included a special letter Connor and Allison wrote about the trip. It is very professionally printed. Highly recommend this if you want to preserve a special memory. Anyway our week in Ft. Myers was coming to an end (you get special dockage rates if you stay a week). We wanted to move south on the River to Ft Myers Beach. The city has set up an official anchorage area where you can tie up to a mooring ball for $13 a night. They also have a dinghy dock where you can tie up your dinghy and visit the town. Pretty neat. Very windy trip downriver to Matanzas Pass where we entered the Ft. Myers Beach Anchorage area. Before tying up to a mooring ball we took on 195 gals of fuel at Ballards Oil Co. They service the shrimp boat fleet, so they move lots of fuel and have the best price around. $3.19/gal--no credit cards-personal check okay. What is a mooring ball you ask. Well it is a floating ball approximately 3' in diameter which is solidly anchored to the bottom. An eye on the top of the ball holds another heavy line that you pick up and attach to your boat. Pretty simple process, grab the line with the boat hook and attach it to an eye on the boat. No anchor to put out. After we got situated we took the dinghy down, put it in the water and we were off to town. It wasn't long until we met up with three other looper couples, Sun Cat, Gypsy Time, and Catch me if U Can(by land yacht). After some drinks at a beachside bar, all 8 of us retired to the Matanzas Inn for a great meal. Windy dingy ride home--it was short-- only about 1/2 mile, but it was dark. The wind blew all night and it was a little noisy sleeping on the boat as the water slapped against the bottom and the mooring ball rope groaned a little as it rubbed on the boat eye. The next morning I did some bookwork, then we were off to town for lunch. It didn't take us long to tour the downtown area and then we hopped on the trolley for 25 cents and took a tour of the area. Saw a movie theater on the tour and after an ice cream cone we decided to get back on the trolley and go see The Bucket List. Only problem is that all the other "snowbirds'' in the area wanted to see it too, so we had to settle for Charlie Wilson's War. Meal tonight was a hot cold meat sandwich (Judy says it was a Panini) on the boat. Tomorrow we are headed south to Naples