Little Shark River to Marco Island

3/2/2017

Although we both got up around 7:00 a.m., we did not leave the anchorage until after 9:30. Clark discovered last night that the generator overcharges the generator battery. This may explain the ruptured battery that had to be replaced. Considering the huge expense and the inconvenience of tracking one down, we do not want another one to rupture! He tried a couple of ideas to address the issue quickly and struck out on all counts.

We had hazy skies and low visibility as we readied to leave the anchorage. With the volume of no-see-ums we experienced the night before, we kept the boat closed. Unfortunately, Clark had to venture out on the bow to remove the chafe guard and monitor the retraction of the anchor line.

He came back in, after raising the anchor, slapping himself to remove the bugs. He sat down to drive; I took one look at his shirt and told him we had to take it off. It was covered in gnats! As I pulled the shirt off over his head, I captured the bugs in the shirt and left it rolled in a ball to one side to deal with later.

Neither of us have ever driven from the lower helm before, so it was a new experience for both of us. Since Clark had some waypoints to put in the chart plotter plus some other miscellaneous tasks to perform, I got the “fun” of driving. With all windows and doors closed and an inability to run the generator for air conditioning, due to the overcharging issue, we had little-to-no air circulation. As the pilot house is directly over the engine room, it gets very hot there. I was not a happy camper.

While piloting the boat, I briefly tried to locate the Auto Pilot on the lower helm station. I did not see it in my brief search. I was not even sure if we had one on the lower helm. With reduced visibility, crab traps appearing at random times, and worrying about course headings and water depths, I had no time to explore the instrument panel to find out.

Clark had gone up top to see about opening the upper helm but came back saying it was covered in bugs. He offered to take the piloting job.  I gladly relinquished it to him and went in search of a fan to move some air. As soon as he sat down he turned on the Auto Pilot that I had been unable to find – right in front of me! Oh well, I know next time.

Since we did have a breeze due to the movement of the boat, I decided to venture up top and see about the bug situation. I found tons of them, but they were not swarming. They just covered every flat surface. I quickly went down below and grabbed an old towel. Then came back up and closed off the boat while I worked swatting them away with the towel. It took a while because they kept settling back down again, but eventually I got rid of 90% of them and gave Clark the “all clear” to move up top.

Once we mastered the gnat problem, we just had the monotony of traversing the Gulf towards our next destination – a Marco Island anchorage at Factory Bay. As with other crossings of the Gulf, it was mostly a bore with random occurrences of crab trap mine fields. Yesterday, we had seagulls and cormorants posing as crab trap buoys. Today, it was a pelican that convinced me I had to turn off Auto Pilot and steer away. I wanted his photo for the blog, but by the time I had the camera ready, the sun blocked the picture.

To pass the time on the long ride today, I piloted the boat; read a nautical, historical novel on my Kindle; and made a list of all the things we discovered, within 24 hours of leaving Faro Blanco, that are still not working correctly with the boat.

            1 – Generator overcharges generator battery

            2 - Chart Plotter randomly decides to reboot itself

            3 – Antifreeze leaks from the overflow on startup

            4 – Anchor winch guide pops out when dropping anchor

            5 – Pilot House air conditioner shows a “high pressure” error and cannot be used

            6 – Battery usage overnight is high – we need LED lights and some ways to reduce usage

Clark thought he had fixed some of these. Well, surprise!

Finally, after hours of travel, we arrived at the entrance to Marco Island.

Entrance to Marco Island

We saw very few boats as we crossed the Gulf, but we found a bunch of them as we approached Marco Island. We followed so many of them in that I asked Clark to take a picture of the "parade".

Parade of boats moving towards marinas and anchorages of Marco Island

We had planned on staying at an anchorage in Factory Bay, but with the heat, humidity, and bug situation, Clark called several marinas to see if we could get in anywhere. No luck! We anchored as originally planned in almost the exact same place we anchored on our way to the Florida Keys. When we had our anchor set, I checked the time. We left the anchorage at Little Shark River at 9:30 and we dropped anchor at Marco Island seven hours later at 4:30.

Exhausted, I stretched out on the couch and played some games on my tablet until dinner time. After dinner I did trip planning to work out details of moving the boat and the car as we head up the east coast. After dinner, since I was several days behind, I sat down to work on the blog. Time for bed!