We left LaBelle bright and early, motored quickly past the sailboat that left well before us, and spent the rest of the morning on the water by ourselves. After another lock we were back at sea level and salt water again. As we cruised into Fort Myers a few boats started to dot the water. We pulled in at our marina for the next month where we’ll finish up our projects, provision, and leave for next season’s adventure from, once the hurricane season ends.
When we first pulled in I thought maybe there was a Grand Banks dealership based here.
We’re just a couple blocks from Old Town Fort Myers, which is a nice looking area full of restaurants. Also right next to the grocery store. Only thing missing is an Ace Hardware and we’d have it all.
This wasn’t on the list, but it’s been bugging me for a while. A yellowed piece of fiberglass and electronics that aren’t being used—this had to get cleaned up. I ripped out the old stuff, cut a new piece of starboard plastic to cover it up, and found a plastics shop nearby to cut me a new sheet of Lexan, and the transformation is almost complete. We’ve still got one more hole to cover up, and now that black plastic that the instruments are mounted on is bugging me too. But… this wasn’t even supposed to be on the list!
This however, has been high up on the list. We’re replacing the old AC powered fridge compressor with two small DC units from CoolBlue (and the same company that we got our watermaker from, CruiseRO). They rehabbed our cold plates, sent pre-charged copper tubes, and all I had to do was install it. Really, the only difficult part of the job was running the copper tubes through the boat. Even that wasn’t all that difficult, but trying to make everything run where I wanted it to, and keep it clean and well secured at the same time was a bit exhausting. But hey, at the end of the day we’ve now got refrigeration again—and enough solar power to run them. Really, the biggest problem with the original system was that we were tied to the boat. Twice a day we had to run the generator to cool the fridges off. They’d get to temperature and then slowly warm up until we did it again. No more of that. Now we’ll just have nice steady cold fridges all the time, and we could be gone from the boat for a week and they’d still be just like we left them.
We were so happy to put the dorm fridge out on the dock that we didn’t even bother selling it. A Free sign and it was gone in a few minutes.
Ali thought she was pretty funny stacking food on top of me while I wrestled with the heavy cold plate.
I used to work in a trading pit surrounded by sweaty swearing men all day. Now it’s just a laptop and these two smelly kids.
Finally made the final connections on the solar panels. It’s fun to see our battery charger completely shut off during the day now while the panels do the job instead. 400 watts of solar should give us about 20 amps per hour which will be far more than enough for our fridges. Our other 12v usage on the boat is so minimal that it hardly matters.
Downtown for music on the streets. I have to say, we pretty much can’t stand Florida, but this tiny little corner of it is making us happy.
19 Comments on “Fort Myers”
Your kids are so adorable. They are the same age as my two oldest grandkids.
I suggest motoring up to see Leoma Lovegrove in Matlacha if you never have, one of my favorite places in the world 😀
Her Art is so fun to see, and her studio is amazing.
I checked out her website, really neat stuff.
Are the kids gonna trick or treat?
I’ve got a vampire and a Wheel of Fortune this year! 🙂
I saw your photos – funny! Is Wheel of Fortune still on?!
Yes we found a neighborhood to let the kids be a black cat and a ghost. Old school.
Still alive and well, Ali!
If you blow it up, you’ll see Halloween appropriate spaces on the Wheel; of Fortune! 🙂
Will you be heading over to Sanibel? You are really close. What kind of books does West like to read? Nika’s friend is redoing some of The Boxcar Children. I think your kids would enjoy them. Safe travels and Godspeed
Hi Kay, Yes we went up to the island and told the kids all about when we were there as teens (even about being pulled over by the police for not wearing helmets on our rented scooter!). Do you still have the condo there? You know that was my first ever airplane ride, was to Florida and that condo?!
The kids are attending a Sea School there a few times a week also.
Missing you guys so much!
The kids look so cute and happy!?
Missing you as well, Theresa. The kids are definitely ready to get a move on, and back to their “normal” days of swimming in beautiful places again.
Definitely check out Sanibel and Captiva. Eat at the Island Cow in Sanibel. It’s an event to watch the sunset at the tip of Captiva.
Yes, done and done. We ate at the Island Cow when we were down here looking at boats when Ouest was 6-months-old.
I thought the fiberglass looked fine until I scrolled down & saw the new gleaming clear version. Wow! What a difference that makes!
Funny thing was that, it bothered Pat more than me – which is crazy because I’m the “picky” one. It does look good, and with how many projects Pat has started-but-not-finished, it made him happy. Well besides for the hole still not covered up…
Are you going to Mexico’s Caribbean coast by a counter-clockwise loop around the gulf in your upcoming adventure? That would be interesting and new.
Not exactly but we are going to new-to-us cruising grounds this season. Woot! Woot!
Looking at pictures of Ouest reading gives me a great feeling. It’s just something you don’t see much of anymore.
She was a reluctant reader, but now, she is just going nuts. So happy for her. Lowe isn’t as happy about this new development. 🙂
Very interesting! My grandparents lived in Ft. Myers for over 30 years, but way out in the ‘burbs, and we rarely got downtown. Is that a pedestrian boulevard I spy? Wow! Who would’a thunk it. Have not been back there since my grandmother died in 2002, so a lot has changed, I’m sure.