After a peaceful night at anchor at Don Pedro, George fit in one more dinghy excursion to explore more mangrove channels (not surprisingly, alone this time). When he returned, we motored Assisted Living south through Boca Grande and on to Cayo Costa, another wonderful state park. It was Saturday, January 10th, and P-A-R-T-Y central at the small peninsula in the Cayo Costa anchorage. It was kind of like Panama City’s Shell Island on a holiday weekend, except for smaller, with more boats more densely packed. Although the competing country music cacophony made us feel right at home. When it went to rap, we started the generator to drown out the noise. In between, our friends, Ben and Nan Hall, who live nearby in Bokeelia, boated over to visit with us at our anchorage. The rappers left shortly after Ben and Nan departed, and we enjoyed a quiet dinner aboard.

In the morning, we headed out in the dinghy to see if we could locate and traverse the holy grail of mangrove tunnels, the Tunnel of Love at Cayo Costa. We had found this channel many years ago, and thought it was so cool that we’d returned several times to show guests and friends. Cayo Costa, however, was the center of Hurricane Ian, and most of the park suffered catastrophic damage. Ben and Nan thought it was unlikely that the Tunnel of Love had survived, but we set out that morning anyway to find out for ourselves. We found the entrance, but it was almost entirely blocked by a large high and dry sand bar. Not one to be deterred, George dragged Chris and the dinghy around the sandbar until he found a narrow way in. As we made our way in and through the tunnel, George trimmed loads of dead debris. It was narrow, tight and shallow, and although we were able to motor through parts, other parts required George to disembark and personally sherpa Chris and the dinghy. We finally emerged into a clear lake with a huge mound of sand on its western shore. We beached the dinghy and trudged over the sand hill and were rewarded with a spectacular open beach covered in shells. The only one more surprised than us was a lone woman walking the shoreline who was a bit confused about how it was we popped up on what she thought was a secluded beach. The return trip through the Tunnel of Love was not nearly as arduous, thanks to the clearing that George had done on the way in. George put together a fantastic video of our journey (in double time) through the Tunnel of Love and on to the pristine beach of Cayo Costa. (Just a heads up for those of you who missed it – thanks, Mama – if text in our posts is underlined, that means there are live links that take you to view either a video or more information).

That evening we were invited for cocktails on the boat anchored next to us. Alan and Eleanor, on m/v Skin Deep, from England, will be completing their loop in Stuart, Florida within the month. Even before their American loop adventure, they were incredibly accomplished boaters, who have sailed across the Atlantic, and have spent seven seasons aboard their sailboat in the Bahamas. They also have a sailboat in Greece. It was fun to get to know them and hear about some of their favorite experiences on the loop. Eleanor said that their favorite part of the trip was getting to experience all the wonderful small American towns along the waterways. Like most Europeans, all their previous visits to the US had only taken them to big cities. They were favorably impressed with small town America.

We rocked and rolled all night at anchor, with stout winds and even higher gusts, and a change of wind direction that left us exposed to a fetch. We were happy to pull anchor the next morning to head to Captiva Island. Once we left Cayo Costa, the wind was behind us, making for a smooth ride. On our first approach into the channel to Captiva, the depth gauge abruptly went negative, so George headed back out to reassess and call a nearby marina for local knowledge. He was assured that there was plenty of depth in the channel, so we inched our way forward. Unlike our first approach, the second time there was no other boat traffic in the channel, and we were relieved to see reasonable depths all the way in. We surmise that the prop wash and turbulence from the boat traffic on our first approach may have confused our depth sounder, resulting in false negative readings.

We tied up without assistance in an extremely narrow slip at the Captiva Island Yacht Club (the Club was closed on Mondays). The space between the pilings and our boat was so narrow that I feared our bumpers would pop when we squeezed them into place. On a positive note, once it was wedged into the slip, the boat didn’t move or rock by even a millimeter. By wonderful coincidence, one of Chris’ dearest childhood friends, Julia, was vacationing in Captiva Island with her husband, Jeff, and they met us on the boat and we all walked over for dinner at the Old Captiva House. One of the biggest blessings of this trip has been all the wonderful friends with whom we have been able to reconnect along the way.

The next morning, January 13^th, we slowly extricated Assisted Living from her tight slip by manually adjusting the dock lines to pull her back free of the pinch point pilings, then carefully motored away. The trip out the Captiva Island entrance channel was uneventful, so we have convinced ourselves that the previous negative depth readings were due to churning from heavy boat traffic. We had an easy 16-mile trip to Fort Myers, where we entered the Calooshatchee River and docked at the St. Charles Yacht Club, another beautiful FCYC club. It seems the Garmin/Volvo Penta software update we installed a few days earlier had one more surprise for us (I started to write “one last surprise” but then realized that if I sent that out into the world, I would be practically inviting yet another kick in the pants at some unsuspecting point in the future). From the flybridge helm, George positioned the boat to back into the slip at St. Charles, then as he usually does, he engaged DPS (dynamic position stabilization – to hold the boat in place) and moved to the aft cockpit docking station for the final maneuvering. Alas, the docking station helm would not engage. Indeed, the control screen had changed entirely, and nothing he tried would allow the controls to be transferred from the flybridge. He climbed back to the flybridge and docked the boat from there, with Chris at the back of the boat calling off the distances between our stern and the slip (he loves when I do that).

The Club was closing shortly after our arrival, but the dockmaster told us to feel free to use the pool and the laundry facilities. Chris took advantage of their full-sized washer and dryer to launder all our heavy bedding and towels, while George went for a swim in the heated pool. George also reached out to the most amazing Volvo tech, our own Jodi Kennedy, owner of Marine Maintenance in Panama City. Jodi has always taken excellent care of us and today was no exception. Even though it was after hours, Jodi returned George’s call and talked George through all the steps to troubleshoot and ultimately reset our aft docking station. Knowledgeable, patient and responsive – they don’t get any better than Jodi with Marine Maintenance.

We were leaving the next morning to drive home to Panama City for a short visit to take care of some business and to orient our friends, Marty and Angela, to our house (they will be looking after our house while we are on the Loop), so we spent the evening readying the boat for us to be away from her for several days.