Salty Sams Marina, Ft. Myers Beach, Florida 12/10 – 12/12/2021
Coming down the ICW into the Ft. Myers area, my navigating skills were brought into good use! We have taken to using an app called Aquamaps on my tablet to supplement the Garmin GPS display at the helm. This helps, since I can drill down to get more detail, look further ahead for anchorage and other destinations. I’m still learning, but I recently learned that I can actually plot a course, and save it, to give Dan guidance on things to look for in our cruising. The waterway into Ft. Myers/Ft. Myers Beach is VERY busy, not only with boats, but with the various channels into various destinations. I was able to save us some time and frustration by having the routing information easily to hand. To get into Salty Sams, we had to go past the main channel into Ft. Myers. There were so many marinas there! We did manage to find the marina and got into our slip – they actually had some good dockhands to help, unlike most places we have experienced on this trip!
A few words about docking… Although I had some training (4 years ago!), I have had very little practice and NO confidence in docking. Those slips look SO narrow! Dan has lots of experience and confidence and even he has had problems on occasion – especially in windy or with strong currents. But, we have gotten pretty good in our partnership with docking. One thing that helps tremendously is our ‘marriage savers’, wireless headsets with which we can talk to each other in a normal voice. Dan needs to know how close the boat is in the back, where he cannot see. I tell him that and also any other guidance that feels right, and I have fenders and lines ready to deploy. Usually, I can hook one line to a dock post or cleat, tighten it up, then can jump onto the dock to finish up. We don’t really need any help. When there is help, I find myself cautioning them “Don’t pull on the boat – Captain is very capable of placing the boat where he needs it!” The wise and experienced dockhands will just hold the line until the boat stops moving, then secure it. Young and inexperienced dockhands tend to jerk on the lines to try and move the boat where they think it needs to go…
There are quite a few boats on this journey who are being piloted by a single person – I am in awe of them. I can’t for the life of me figure out how they do it all – docking, locking. Not to mention, they have to do all the planning, deciding where to go, making reservations. And, then there’s provisioning, cooking, laundry – all chores that Dan and I share.
Back to Salty Sams – there are TWO restaurants there, both with live entertainment and Happy Hours every night! Fortunately, we were located some distance from them and couldn’t hear the music from our slip. We tried both restaurants, and enjoyed them. We also had the opportunity to visit with another friend, Linda Brack, from our church back home. Linda has a very nice condo there in Ft. Myers Beach where she lives for six months a year. Linda drove us out to the end of Captiva Island, to her favorite restaurant there, where we had a delicious lunch. We enjoyed checking out all the beautiful homes on the way there and back.
Our next stop is at David and Barbara Doyle’s home, where they have invited us to put our boat at their dock for the next few days and then for our trip back to Michigan. What a great benefit!
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| Visitor to the dock! |
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| Linda Brack with us at the restaurant |
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| Delicious dessert - shared by three of us! |
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| This was the fun restaurant |
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