Fort Meyers Beach and Marco Island

We grabbed a mooring ball in Matanzas Pass at Fort Meyers Beach. There is a casino boat docked here and just behind it was Total Return, a beautiful Nordhaven trawler owned by a couple from Rochester. We first met them at Grafton where the Illinois meets the Mississippi. They had left our marina there that morning and noticed us. We talked on the radio at that time. Later they surprised us as they walked down our dock to see us. They had rented a car and driven back to see us. The amazing thing was that he was wearing a Brantling Hill t-shirt which I immediately commented on. Turns out Russ had learned to ski there. We had toured their boat at Crowley's back in Chicago when a friend of Russ's, who we had met in the North Channel, invited us aboard. We kept track of each other as we traveled south.

While we were in Burnt Store Marina, we rented a car and drove to Naples and Marco Island so Annette could revisit the area where her parents had spent their winters.
We found the mobile home park still there and looking about the same. Everything else seemed highly developed. Marco was much more built up than when we were there years ago. Annette decided not to pay the money to park and walk on Tigertail Beach. The attendant said that it was all changed by a hurricane and there was now a lagoon between the shore and the beach on the Gulf. Annette's disappointment was eased a bit when we anchored in Capri Pass after a nice sail and motorsail from Fort Meyers Beach. We got the dinghy down and motored over to the beach on Marco just around the corner from Tigertail. There she was able to pick up shells and sand dollars. We had cocktails on a catamaran anchored off the beach that had a parrot named after Jimmie Buffet.