Day 151: Saturday, February 2, 2013

Port to Port: Fort Myers Beach

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Marina

Mile to Mile: Happy Birthday Linda. We’ll have to celebrate the next time we cross paths. Save some cake (and beer and chicken wings) for us.

We had big plans today – go to a pancake breakfast and go to the grand opening BBQ for a local marina. We went 0 for 2 today. We tried to get a trolley ride to the pancake breakfast but it never showed up. Oh well, we saved $3.50 each plus the trolley ride (and the extra calories) and we still have a backup plan – the marina BBQ. After doing some boat projects in the morning, we walked a couple miles down the beach to the Snook Bight Marina and found a long line of people waiting to pay $5 to get in another long line to wait for food. The hamburgers and chicken wings looked and smelled amazing but they were not at all prepared for the number of people who came out for cheap food on a nice sunny day. After over an hour wait to get armbands we moved to the food line and waited another 40 minutes without moving 10 feet and decided to bail out. It didn’t help that people kept cheating and bringing friends into the line ahead of other people. Oh well. We saved another $5 each and got a free suntan waiting in line (that’s, of course, not what I was thinking while the line was creeping along).

On to Plan C. We went to Publix and for the same amount we would have spent at the Marina, bought an amazing chicken strip sub basket and sat on a bench in the sun enjoying our lunch.

We took a sunny, leisurely walk back to the boat along the beach. The beach has an amazing calming effect. I have no idea what we did the rest of the afternoon, but we cooked leftover beef tips and rice for dinner, watched a movie and slept soundly.