After the first shakedown cruise we realized that more would be necessary to feeling ready to hit The loop in comfort. Others may take a leap of faith, but we like to know we are ready (plus there isn’t a lot in the budget for the unexpected oops, you know).
Paul doesn’t admit to noticing my mooney face when others talk about their travels or we admitted we would be in the marina until April, but when the canvas guy cancelled on Friday morning he suggested we head out for Snook Bight, a well recommended marina, on Fort Myers Beach. I wasn’t going to say no, and he gets points for being the romantic anyway.
We headed out about noon, ate lunch on the river, then got down to what had been a troublespot last cruise, navigating with confidence. The paper chart only came out once (confirmed that it didn’t cover much of the ground we were cruising). We were able to adjust the chart plotter (new with the boat) without consulting the manual (which we had discovered was not on the boat inspite of three books of literature – we now have both an electronic and a paper copy onboard). I continued to use Navionics on the iPad to overview the route, find our destination, and look at Active Captain posts as well as tide data.
But new this cruise was chart plotter on the laptop.
New program for using laptop for navigation.
We had just played with it Thursday afternoon and after several hours thought we had it running. Sure enough it fired right up, showed the river (which by some bug is not on my Navionics), and the Gulf route into Fort Myers Beach. The only glitch was that it didn’t switch over to a new chart automatically when we entered the ICW behind Estero Island. However, the other two did and Paul had been here before so, no one panicked. (Got this figured out on the way home, now just need to add a mount and an outlet in the cockpit for this and we are set.)
We had a lovely weekend away, walked the beach and the pier, had a fabulous, but pricey dinner at the Marina, had an entertaining lunch at Nervous Nellies where we watched the tall ship Lynx dock in high winds, met a large number of boaters from Michigan, took a look at the mooring field for a future trip, and all in all had a great weekend away.
SV Lynx as we passed her on our way in.
Travels of the Infinite Sea 