Fort Myers Beach/Punta Blanca Island (Cayo Costa)

We left Clearwater Thursday morning, May 24th, and had a lovely day until about 7 pm! Then....yikes! High winds, nasty seas, driving rain, and lightning! The only thing missing was the scary music, but I knew we had lots of friends praying for us, (thank you!) and that we'd be fine. What a long, sleepless night, but the dogs were real troopers! They didn't get sick, whine, or even drool! I kept hearing Mom say, "This too will pass!", and she was right!! It also helped to think of it as a big washing machine, thanks to Meredith on "Bahamamama"! By dawn, all was well with the world, and we sailed through the Boca Grande cut and anchored at Punta Blanca Island, near Captiva. I rowed the dogs in for a well-deserved romp on the deserted beach, Daren changed the fuel filter, we ate lunch, and then headed for Ft. Myers Beach anchorage to see Sue and Al, whom we hadn't seen since November! It was a great reunion, and we all went to a wonderful outside dinner at Nervous Nellie's...in Sue and Al's dinghy, which turned out to be a mistake! When we got home, we found Libby tied to the wheel in the cockpit and DAMP! Hmmmm. Next morning, I met our kind neighbors Randy and Margaret on S/V "Neariad", who fished her out of the water...twice! Randy said the second time he saw her swimming, he brought a piece of line! Thank God they saw her! I shudder to think what would've happened to our sweet Libby, who tried to jump into the dinghy...and missed! Randy said she'd have swum to shore and been returned to us because of her chip! Still, we won't make THAT mistake again! We've had a wonderful time here with Sue and Al. The anchorage is really nice, with a dinghy dock and nice laundry and showers, and lots of restaurants and resorts. Fort Myers Beach has really changed for the better since we last saw it in '92, but the dogs have to be on leashes and they HATE that! The place was packed for Memorial Day weekend, but Sunday, we had a wonderful visit from Tom and Jodie, who we hadn't seen in 6 yrs! We met them in Nassau during the Christmas storm of '94. They live in Stuart and brought Daren a SCUBA tank we gave him when we sold our trawler in 2001! Good thing he didn't charge us storage! : ) We had lunch and then drove to a West Marine store. They are SO entertaining! Tom knows EVERYONE, and even met the founder of Bacardi Rum while captaining a boat in Puerto Rico. Tom learned the real reason there's a red bat on the bottle! Yesterday, we decided to bring the dogs back over to a deserted beach, but had to go 30 miles back to the one near Captiva! Deserted beaches are hard to come by around here!! We are waiting for more courtesy flags we ordered that we thought Tom and Jodie would bring us Sunday, but they hadn't arrived yet! It's tempting to leave without them, but Al and Sue would like to join us on the trip to the Dry Tortugas (west of Key West) and they're waiting for a battery charger anyway, and friends of theirs, Jack and Sharolyn, on an Islander 36 just like ours are going to meet us there, too. They're in Marathon at the moment, waiting for mail, too. Then we're off to Mexico, Belize, and Rio Dulce, in Guatemala, which is a great hurricane hole!