Jan 1 New Years in Ft. Myers

Jan 1


Happy New Years!!   Currently in a slip at Legacy Harbor Marina in Ft. Myers.  This area is a favorite winter staging area for loopers.   It’s recommended that if you want to stay here long term (1-2 or 3 months during the winter) you should make reservations up to a year in advance.   Since we never knew when we would get here of how long we might want to stay we don’t have a long-term slip.  Luckily, they’ve been able to accommodate us short-term so far but no guarantees on how much longer – still trying to work things out.   Ft. Myers has a nice downtown  main street  with period buildings and a very active arts and entertainment scene during the season. 

New Years Eve Fireworks Ft Myers

  Lots of snowbirds here already with more expected.    They have a “ball drop” downtown for new years with fireworks over the river.   The main street downtown is closed off and they set up stages for 4 bands and 2 DJ’s.     Brenda and Lee on Moonlighter (we spent a week with them at Fairhope, AL) had us over for New Year’s Eve dinner after docktails and an awesome sunset. It also gave Martha a chance to bond with their 2 cats.

  Then we headed for town.   Big crowd of people mostly much younger than us.  Loud music with songs we did not know.    Fireworks display was short lived – couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. We’re sounding more  and more like some old curmudgeons every day but at least we stayed up past midnight!!   Next up is the Seafood and Music festival downtown this Fri thru Sun.  

Meals onboard for a change  on New Years day.  It's surprising what we can cook up in our little galley when we put our mind to it.

Breakfast -  Mimosas, ham, homefries,  toast, and a spinach-tomato-cheese omelet.

Dinner - red wine, grilled pork tenderloin, greens, black eyed peas and rice.  All the things we need to bring us another year of luck.

We’re sort of at a crossroads.  Our original plan was to slowly work our way down to the keys and then slowly head up the east coast.  After taking a serious  look at the navigation charts and getting a better feel for the  weather systems  in the winter down here (wind blows about all the time and changes direction almost daily) we decided  to wait things out in this area and take the cross Florida Okeechobee Lake route in Feb.  With our draft we would have to take the Hawk Channel route around the keys which is the passage on the ocean side.   Limited protection from seas while underway and just a few inlets with deep water depths that would allow us to get to the protected anchorages or marinas.  The transit through the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area, while eye opening for the many mega yachts and multi-million dollar homes, is all slow going with lots of bridges and just didn’t seem like fun.  Plus very expensive marinas and limited anchorages.   The cross Florida route will drop us off north of all that in Stuart.   So right now the plan is to continue staying here if we can arrange a monthly rate or bounce around in this area for the next month.   There’s still several other towns we can visit and a few more anchorages to explore whenever  the weather cooperates.