Waiting for Weather in Marco Island Florida

We had about given up selling the truck in St. Pete Beach, because we had only gotten one phone call about our Craig's list add, and that was from a guy all the way over in Lakeland. Pat was planning to drive the truck to Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving with the her step-son and family. Since Curtis had agreed to sell the truck for us, she had already purchased her return airline ticket, when that one guy from Lakeland called back and wanted to know if he could still look at the truck. To make a long story short, he bought the truck, and we hurriedly drove up to Tampa to pick up the life raft and epirb, while he went back to Lakeland to pick up a cashier's check to pay for the truck. The Mack Pack finally arrived and fits and works great. We said our goodbyes to Ted, Peggy and Nevada ..... It's always hard to leave friends along the way.

We left St. Pete Beach for Marco Island Saturday morning about 10:00am. We went out the Pass-A-Grille inlet and headed south. The predicted 10 to 15 kt. north winds turned out to be 2 to 6 kt. east winds for much of the trip, so we motorsailed down to about Sanibel Island, where the winds picked up about midnight, and we had a great sail the rest of the way. The only thing, it was cold, so we had to wrap up in sweatshirts and foul weather gear. (We are ready to get to warmer waters!) Since we were just off the beach, we had TV, so Bill got to watch his "DAWGS" whoop up on Ga Tech. (That was certainly the highlight of the trip for Bill).

We Arrived at Marco Island about 10:00am Sunday and motored into our favorite anchorage (Factory Cove) and dropped the anchor. This is where they had a lawsuit over anchoring rights, but so far, no one has said anything to us. Since there is a big storm predicted for the end of the week, we decided to wait it out here (where we have, TV, wifi internet, grocery stores and resturants) rather than go on to the Dry Tortugas NP, where there are no services, what so ever. Yesterday, we played tourist .... put the dingy down and went out to the beach and went shelling. We found some sand dollars which we gave away to the other tourists. After we returned from the beach, we cruised (in the dingy) up and down some of the canals in search of a quicker way to the Public's Supermarket. No Luck! We'll just have to walk the mile or so there and the mile or so back. Oh well, it's good excerise!