Wednesday, February 13, 2013 – Ft. Myers:

            Happy Birthday to Grandson, Hunter, who is 10 years old today!  Happy Birthday, Hunter – hope you have a great day!

            We had a quiet evening last night – dinner on the boat and then we did our civic duty and watched the State of the Union address, and then went to bed.  I thought the boat might rock around a little bit as we were on the face dock; but we were tied up on the inside, and we tightened up the lines before we closed up for the night, and the boat kept pretty still.

            Just after breakfast, we got a call from one of our friends up north who is down here also on their sailboat, and we got our schedules out and compared itineraries, and we decided to try and meet up with them in Captiva on Saturday.

That worked out well for us as we were going to have to move from our spot here if we wanted to stay past Friday.  So now we will leave here on Friday, and will go a day early to Tween Waters Marina in Captiva.  The weather for the rest of the week doesn’t look so hot, so here’s hoping Mother Nature cooperates, and we can get there without any weather glitches.

            I decided that a smart thing to do after breakfast would be to do laundry.  There are 200 slips here, and only four washers and dryers.  I thought it might be a problem, but I got two washing machines without any waiting!  Actually, a lot of slips are empty here, so I guess there isn’t as much competition for the laundry room as I thought there would be.  After laundry, I did my favorite chore – pay bills.  If I were King, I would ban all voice messaging machines by companies, and decree that the phone would have to be answered by a real, live, breathing person!  I had a question about the bill for our boat insurance (which I thought was rather important considering we are living on the boat), but I couldn’t get a live person to save my life!  I don’t know how many different numbers I tried, but I finally got through after an interminable amount of time.  The good news was, however, that I had paid the bill up through April, and, yes, I had written it down, but for some reason I didn’t believe myself.  Well, unfortunately, I’m not King, either.

            After that frustrating portion of the morning, we had lunch and then decided to walk into town, find the trolley, hop on and go to Publix.  There is the “blue” trolley that seems to go everywhere every ten minutes except to Publix.  We had to wait ½ hour for the “gold” trolley, which is the one to take you out to the grocery store.  It only runs every ½ hour, but we charged through the store (I think that helped keep the bill down), and only had to wait about 10 minutes for the trolley to pick us up again.  Well, at least it’s free.  Back to the boat to put the groceries away.

            The marina where we are staying is having a “Meet and Greet/Valentine’s Day Get Together” tonight, and we are going to go check it out.  You bring your own wine, and a “red” dish, and wear something red.  They cook hamburgers and hotdogs, and of all things, chili.   It’s only about 85° out and humid, so I don’t think chili is particularly appetizing, but hey, it’s February!  I, like probably everybody else, am bringing strawberries.

            So at 6:00 p.m. we set off for the marina office and barbeque area which was right on the waterfront, and, guess what, I was the only one who brought fresh strawberries.  Most of the dessert type items were store-bought cookies and brownies, so I was happy that I was somewhat original.  The food was typical picnic food, but really delicious.  The hotdogs and hamburgers were really good, and there must have been 60 or 70 people there.  We really didn’t meet a lot of new people.  I think most of the people who were there were living at the marina on their boats and had made their circle of friends, but everybody was very friendly, and we would definitely go again if we came back here again.  I think they do a weekly barbeque get-together all season long.

            After we had stuffed ourselves and exhausted all conversation we could, we ambled back to the boat for the rest of the evening.  Tomorrow we plan on going to Thomas Edison’s house and maybe walk around the town a little more.  Good night for now!

A street in Ft. Myers