Up and at it early this AM for no particular reason. After washing down the boat last night, enjoying a cocktail, we walked only a short distance from the dock to find a lovely French restaurant for dinner - Bleu Provence. Outstanding Pompano fish. Today, after breakfast we’ll explore more of the town which appears to be all walkable from the city dock. I see there is an ACE Hardware store nearby. I’ll need to find a replacement sprayer for the hose. Water pressure is so high at the docks that it’s causing major leaking at the threads of the sprayer. I guess buying the $.99 special wasn’t such a good idea after all.


Calculated the fuel burn rate from yesterday; it was ~30 gal / hr with the generator running. That works out to be ~ .72 mpg: not bad for moving 32,000 lbs at 22 mph.


We’ll be visiting with Sharon and Kevin this weekend and hoping for good weather. Early forecasts indicate a week of rain. Our plan is to move on to Marathon Thursday. I’ll need to look more closely at wind and sea conditions to determine if it’s worth running in the rain. I would prefer to avoid a socked in (foggy / low visibility) travel day. In fact, during the trip yesterday we encountered two low visibility spots. They first appeared on the radar as a line of objects (boats?) then as we got closer all we saw was a “fog curtain”. I navigated around the first encounter and entered the second with caution. Nothing there other than dense clouds / fog.


This is our first-time visiting Naples. It looks to be a very upscale area. The inlet cut was easily navigable with beautiful homes lining the cut. Saw our first Manatee and several dolphins. Only concern is the speed limit. From the Gulf you must enter at no wake; however, after a few hundred yards the speed limit is posted at max 30 mph! Pontoons, fishing boats and others have no issue overtaking us on plane and throwing a sizable wake our way. Fortunately, the city dock is located in a no wake area, and we had a very calm night.


Oh, I might have overlooked this small fact at our dock in Clearwater - it too was located in a no wake area but every day beginning at ~ 0500 hrs the rocking began and lasted throughout the day and long into the night. So much for respecting no wake zones. And the birds, especially pelicans - none have a constipation issue! And they like clean white boats - easier targets! So far in Naples we haven’t seen the first pelican!