Ship of Imagination for a Voyage of Dreams: March/April

March 29th - We arrived in Clewiston late in the evening, tied up to a couple of bollards around 8:30 pm and went to bed exhausted. In the morning, realizing that we were running short on provisions, the Captain suggested we check out Roland Martin's Fish Camp for breakfast. As I am always willing to go out to eat instead of cooking....we untied the Arc and went in search of breakfast. I can't believe that I didn't take a picture of the Fish Camp but...oh well.

March 30th - We ate and then departed heading toward LaBelle, our old stomping grounds. Along the way we saw advertising for the Glades Marina restaurant and that transients were welcome so we decided to check it out for dinner. To our disappointment the restaurant had closed years ago and the Marina...well it was a basin completely lined up with livaboards. No food and no room at the inn. As we were turning around to leave we were hailed by the captain of a Jefferson 60 who invited us to raft up for the night. We happily obliged and threw some chicken on the grill.

April 1st - We departed early the next morning arriving in Port LaBelle at 10:30 am. We stayed long enough to shop for provisions, fill the water tanks, wash the laundry and take care of the all important stuff, (potty dump).

The sunsets at Port LaBelle are always spectacular!

April 2nd - Having all our housekeeping items checked off the list we departed Port LaBelle heading for Fort Myers at around noon, after the batteries were completely charged.

Our friend Pat and Radars new friend Cracker Jack.

Carter used to have so much fun with these alligators in the Oxbow. LOL

After a short visit with our friend Pat, we found a nice oxbow to drop anchor just past the Alva Bridge. We anchored behind this private island owned by a boating club who happened to be on site having a great time.

We departed this oxbow early the next morning cruising west hoping to find a spot for Radar to take his much needed morning shore leave.

Fortunately we quickly came to the Caloosahatchie State Park with a super nice dock. We stopped to walk Radar, got a chance to empty the trash, and decided to stay for a little while and let the batteries charge while Carter worked on a few things around the Arc.

We moved on heading toward Fort Myers arriving at 3:30 pm where we met up with some other old friends, Mike and Smokey. Smokey was the guy that helped Carter get the diesel running a few years ago in Stienhatchie. It's always good to meet up with old friends! We stayed here for a couple days visiting and re-provisioning a few things we didn't get in La Belle.

April 6th - We departed the Fort Myers city anchorage with the morning tide.

It was kind of cloudy so we pulled over for lunch and to charge up the batteries a little before transiting the dreaded miserable mile. We continued on to the Sanibel Island Causeway and dropped the hook at 6:30 pm.

This is a convenience store along the miserable mile! Now this is guy that needs some solar panels. I shudder to think of how much fuel they have to burn to keep the power on 24/7 with the generator we could hear running in the distance.

We were told that this building was used in the Hulk Hogan TV series Thunder in Paradise. Interesting place.

Just before we crossed our wake in San Carlos sound we ran into this guy from Tow Boat US. Since our batteries where almost dead and the sun wasn't shining much, we were practically drifting with the tide when he came along. He was aching to give us a tow but we had to disappoint him. We had just enough power to reach our destination at the Sanibel Causeway which is where we crossed our wake and competed our transit of the entire intracoastal waterway of Florida powered exclusively by solar energy. Woo Hoo!