Tampa Bay bound

We are northbound in the Gulf of Mexico, running just about a mile offshore, and abreast Manasota Key as I begin typing. The gulf is nearly flat calm, a perfect day for a crossing. By day's end we should be anchored just inside the mouth of Tampa Bay, en route to St. Petersburg.

Not long after I published the last post, the wind picked up on Lake O, and with the fetch of most of the lake in that direction, we had a bit of a bouncy evening. Fortunately the wind laid down by bedtime and we had a relatively comfortable night.

Wednesday we had a pleasant and uneventful cruise along the rim canal, down through the Moore Haven and Ortona locks, and to the drawbridge at LaBelle, where we dropped the hook in a familiar spot (map) for a very quiet and comfortable night. I noticed on the satellite view that one of the places in town, the Quart House (across from the courthouse, naturally) had a large outside patio, and after calling to confirm we tendered ashore at the free town dock and walked the half mile to the restaurant.

Vector silhouetted against sunset over Glover Bight, as seen from Have Another Day. Photo: Laura Stein

Hendry County, of which LaBelle is the seat, apparently has no mask mandate, and while the tables were open-air and well-spaced, we were disappointed to find restaurant staff unmasked. You may recall the last couple of times we encountered this, we made abrupt about-faces and returned home. This time, however, we have a new weapon which, when employed, allowed us to remain relatively safely.

That would be a box of actual, medical-grade, NIOSH-approved N95 respirators made in the USA, right here in Florida in fact. They were not cheap, but they form a tight seal and should stop any occasional droplet transmission from, say, a restaurant server, from reaching our respiratory organs. The box of 20 masks was in our mail delivery that was waiting for us at the boatyard in Stuart.

Before anyone jumps all over me for diverting masks that, theoretically, should be reserved for health-care workers and other essential personnel to our own personal use, I would ask you to read this New York Times article, which relates a sad tale of how the manufacturer is sitting on a huge inventory of masks and has nearly gone out of business for lack of buyers (long story -- read the article). We're doing our part to help them stay afloat while also keeping ourselves safe.

Dinnertime selfie at The Quart House, showing off my new N95.

The place lacked charm, but the food was OK, and between the outside tables, the low amount of interaction with the server, and our ability to be wearing an N95 for every second of that interaction, we were able to enjoy our meal. It was the only game in town; the nicer place closer to the river, which we enjoyed last visit, was open but not serving outdoors. We spent just a single night in Hendry County.

Thursday we continued downriver, through our final lock, to Fort Myers, where we proceeded directly to the city Yacht Basin for a much-needed pump-out. Afterward, we proceeded across the channel to a spot near Lofton Island with just enough room for us to anchor. We were in the middle of dropping the hook when the Fort Myers PD marine patrol came over to tell us we could not anchor there (in exactly the spot where we anchored on our last visit). He cited some city ordinance prohibiting anchoring between Lofton Island and the city waterfront.

A few years back, in response to a patchwork of local anchoring regulations all over the state that no reasonable boater could keep track of, the state of Florida reserved to itself the sole right to regulate anchoring throughout the state, voiding in one fell swoop all city and county anchoring ordinances. Many are still on the books, but they are unenforceable. Nevertheless, some municipalities occasionally try to sneak enforcement back in, until they get a cease-and-desist order.

Sunset over Lake Okeechobee from our mid-lake anchorage.

We recognize the futility of trying to point any of this out to a police officer, and since I was not willing to hang around Fort Myers for however many weeks it would take to have my day in court, we agreed to move. He pointed out the preferred anchorage, which is on the other side of the island, but we explained the channel to get across was too shallow for us. He advised us to ignore the channel and instead run between the marked channel and the bridge, and he was kind enough to make a pass ahead of us to sound it out.

He reported soundings no lower than 7.1', and while we did see some lower numbers than that, we made it across with inches under the keel. The tide swing here is less than a foot, and we were up about a half, so we knew we would need some tide to get back out. We dropped the hook in 8' in the middle of the anchorage (map). It's actually a nicer spot than where we planned; further from the channel and quieter, with more swing room. And now we have a track we can follow in and out.

We splashed the tender and headed ashore for dinner downtown, where we ended up at Firestone on recommendation of some local friends. Downtown Fort Myers is very vibrant now, and we looked forward to trying a couple of other places over the course of the weekend, intending to hunker down until after the chaos of the weekend boating scene passed.

Downtown Fort Myers from our anchorage. Lofton Island at left.

After dinner we strolled over to 10 Twenty Five for a socially-distanced adult beverage with friends Laura and Ben, who have been docked at the nearby Legacy Harbour Marina for the duration of the pandemic. They were planning to head to nearby Glover Bight in Cape Coral with a buddy-boat for the weekend and we wanted to catch them before they left. We really enjoyed catching up with them over a couple of drinks. At one point they mentioned they were having an issue with midges.

We returned to Vector to find the boat entirely covered with them. We've had our festoon of "cruise ship lights" on a timer for the last several weeks, and that has been fine heretofore, but having any unnecessary lights on at all is definitely not what you want when the midges are swarming. I immediately ascended to the flybridge and unplugged the lights, and the two of us were able to quickly squeak inside through the pilothouse door on the windward side, as the aft deck was completely inaccessible. We finished our evening in the saloon in complete darkness, with just the glow of our computer screens and small USB lights.

We spent the entirety of Friday morning cleaning midges and their excrement off the boat. I vacuumed up most of the live ones with the shop vac while Louise attacked the excrement, the dead ones, and some of the more tenacious live ones with the pressure washer and soap. We had things mostly under control by lunch time, but we both agreed we did not want another night of midges, and we needed to get out of Dodge.

Vector at Glover Bight, as seen from the Westin.

As luck would have it, spring tides had the daily low at minus a half foot, and we would not have enough tide to get back out of the anchorage until well past 2pm. That limited how far we could get, and also put us in the thick of the Friday afternoon boat chaos. It's difficult to describe the zoo that is the lower Caloosahatchee River on any pleasant weekend.

We ended up following our old track into Glover Bight and dropping the hook just a hundred yards from Ben and Laura on Have Another Day, across from the Westin resort (map). They were rafted up with their friends on Light & Salty so that their two sets of children, close in age, could enjoy the water together. We enjoyed hearing the kids having a good time, from a respectable distance.

The last time we were in this anchorage, we were visiting with friends who keep their boat in the adjacent marina, and live in one of the nearby condo units. They are in the Bahamas right now on their boat, doing post-Dorian relief work. This time we got to go ashore for dinner at the resort complex, which sports three restaurants and a tiki bar. We enjoyed dinner at Gather and the Nauti Mermaid. The more upscale Marker 92 is an indoor venue and shuttered for the pandemic, and casual seafood joint Pinchers had their outside tables far too closely spaced for our comfort.

Vector anchored near Useppa Island, as seen from the Cabbage Key Inn.

Most of Cape Coral is a maze of canals; every house, it seems, has a street on one side and a canal on the other. Yesterday morning before weighing anchor, we drove the tender a couple of miles down the canal system to a bridge, where I could scramble ashore and walk to Walgreens. I needed to drop off an eBay sale at their FedEx counter, and we needed milk and insect repellant. The whole round trip took an hour, but I found the "back yard" tour interesting.

After lunch we weighed anchor and headed back to marker 92 (the navigation marker, not the eponymous restaurant), turned back onto the river, and slogged through the no wake zone to Mile 0 of the Okeechobee Waterway. Here begins the "Miserable Mile," a mile-long section of extremely narrow channel cut through the shallows, with heavy cross-current the whole way. And miserable it is, requiring hand-steering the entire time, while being passed by enormous yachts on full plane in both directions.

It was a short day, ending at a familiar anchorage near the private Useppa Island (map) and across from Cabbage Key. We enjoy this anchorage principally because we like to come to the Cabbage Key Inn for dinner. This is a quieter and more stately affair than lunch, which involves a horde of day boaters, and was the inspiration for Jimmy Buffet's song Cheeseburger in Paradise, long before he owned a chain of restaurants himself.

Cabbage Key Inn. The ceiling and walls are covered in dollar bills from visitors. We're seated right in front of the merch cabinet, where the day trippers buy souvenirs. Big screened openings are in front of us.

While lunch (and breakfast) can be served outdoors, the island is far too buggy at dusk for that, and all dinner service is "inside." The dining room, however, is basically a screen porch. We were prepared to take our dinner to go if it felt unsafe, but there was plenty of breeze coming through the room, and the Inn had blocked off every other table to provide extra distance. We enjoyed our meal, and managed to return to Vector with only a handful of bug bites.

Our general plan had been to continue north on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway all the way to St. Pete, but the gulf forecast for today was just too good to pass up. Boca Grande inlet is just a half hour north of Cabbage Key, and we were up with the dawn for a daylight arrival in Tampa Bay. We exited past the barrier islands with two knots behind us, and made an immediate right along the unmarked "swash channel" that shortcuts four miles off the northbound journey. We saw 10' along the swash channel; a big Marlow coming out the inlet behind us called us on the radio to ask about it and then followed our track.

The plotter is telling me we should have the hook down off Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay before cocktail hour. Tomorrow will be an easy cruise up the bay to the St Pete area, where we'll be hunting for a spot to anchor. We've just joined the St. Petersburg Yacht Club as non-resident members, so at least we should be able to use the club docks to get ashore.