Wednesday, March 30, 2011 -- Part 2 – Snook Bight Marina, Fort Myers Beach, FL

 
 
 
 
 After a night near Anna Maria Island, we made our way to Englewood Beach where we found a protected anchorage behind the island and stayed for two weeks. Maureen’s brother and sister-in-law, Mark and Marge, had a nice little cottage on the beach and during that time, their kids and grandkids visited. Craig and Dawn also made a couple of weekend trips down from Clearwater. On one of those visits, they brought along Paul and Cynthia Jacobson, our first cousin who is currently living in New Mexico. It was a “mini” family reunion!








On March 17th, we pulled up anchor in Englewood and began our trip to Ft Myers Beach. Our friends, John and Lisa DeGroot, aboard s/v Independence, were anchored near Useppa Island, one of our favorite anchorages and a good half-way point to stop for the night.  We arrived around 2 pm and as soon as we were anchored, we hopped into the dinghy and followed John and Lisa in search of “The Tunnel of Love,” a tiny waterway crossing through Cayo Costa Island from the protected waterway side to the Gulf. It took us a while to find the tunnel entrance and when we did, there were places where we had to get out of the dinghy and pull it through the shallow water trail through the mangroves. The reward was great, however, when we emerged on the other side to find a beautiful, nearly deserted beach. The Tunnel of Love is not what it used to be – hurricanes in recent years were very hard on the mangroves and the tunnel.

We were on our way early the next morning and pulled into Moss Marine in Ft Myers Beach for fuel just before 11:30 am. Maureen’s sister, Sheila, and her son, Tyler, had been in FMB for the past week with friends and we had made arrangements to take them all out for a boat ride at 1 pm that afternoon. To our surprise, when we were ready to pull away from the fuel dock and meet our passengers, there was no forward or reverse! The transmission had completely given up.

 

Obviously, we could not give the promised ride and spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out the next moves. Since it was a Friday night, Moss Marine did not have any room for us there. Fortunately, Snook Bight Marina, where we had spent the latter half of November and all of December, had a spot available. We made arrangements with Boat US to tow us the few miles through the river from one marina to the other and settled in for whatever time it would take to repair or replace the transmission.

 

It turned out that the transmission had to be replaced. We ordered a new one directly from the manufacturer in England and had it shipped on a priority status. We saved quite a bit of money by taking this route rather than buying from a dealer in the US. The technician from the local dealership did the installation on Monday, March 28th, which went without a hitch.