Ahhhh Naples…manicured yards, manicured medians, manicured everything…big beautiful houses, exotic sports cars, millions of dollars yachts…beautiful beach, lots of nice restaurants, balmy weather…crazy drivers on the road, lots of boat traffic in the main channel, and you could go broke eating out or trying to buy most anything here! Did I miss anything? I’m joking (a little). Naples was actually really awesome. They have a small mooring field at the city dock (8 spots) that allows boats up to 43 feet in length to stay a maximum of 4 nights. AND, it’s only 10 bucks a night. Great deal, great …

After a surplus of being off the grid at Pelican Bay, we were ready to see a few more people, restaurants, stores, etc. Not to mention our vast fresh food offerings that we started with had dwindled to one potato, one tomato, an onion, and a lime. We decided to anchor just off St James City for a couple of days on our way to a longer stay at Ft Myers Beach where we planned to totally re provision. We had a wonderful sail down Pine Island Sound with steady winds of 10-15 mph passing a lot of beautiful places …

After two weeks anchored here in Pelican Bay, we’ve pretty much explored our little area fully and loved every minute of it. The weather has been outstanding. It hasn’t rained one time, and beautiful fall temps moved in to stay by about the second day we were here. Bugs have been a non issue on the boat and on land, either due to the constant breeze or the time of year (probably a bit of both), which is big time for that mosquito magnet I refer to as Lindy. What we’ll call “Cool Beach # 1” has been our go-to …

If I had to sum up life here in Pelican Bay in one word it would be secludedbeauty :). With the only boat dock closer than a 30 minute dinghy ride away being the boat dock at the state park of Cayo Costa (just a couple hundred yards away), there really isn’t anything around here but the natural ecosystem of uninhabited mangrove barrier islands of the Gulf coast. And the boat docks that are 30 minutes or so away aren’t exactly metropolises (google Boca Grande, Cabbage Key, Useppa, Pine Island). At Cayo Costa is the ranger station, a little store, …