No boat travel.
We planned to leave today, and I made preparations accordingly. Before our departure, however, I was determined to buy a story book I had seen displayed at the front desk called "Little Toot" about a tug boat. The reason it fascinated me was due to the fact that a Little Toot tug boat was docked in our marina.
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| Little Toot of Fort Myers, Florida |
I learned from talking to Carly at the front desk that the owners of the Fort Myers Little Toot were related to the author / illustrator of the book.
By the time I got back to the boat, Clark was having second thoughts about leaving today. The wind had kicked up something fierce. That, in conjunction with the possibility of connecting with loopers - specifically rPad, forced Clark to reconsider his "gotta go" thinking. He talked to Carly and found we could stay an extra night. Yay! I was not looking forward to battling the wind.
During all this, Clark got a text message from Tom on rPad which may have helped him decide to stay a bit longer. Tom suggested we get together after a Looper presentation being given at Legacy in the afternoon by an AGLCA harbor host. Since we had no other plans, Clark and I decided to walk down to Legacy Marina at 1 o'clock to hear the presentation. Tom from Sum Escape decided to attend as well, and we walked there together.
The room was packed when we arrived with the majority of the attendees being loopers who had come to learn about the loop from Florida to North Carolina. Since we did not eat ahead of time, Clark and I brought a "picnic lunch" to eat during the talk. As I munched on my sandwich, I decided I was in serious trouble when the presenter started his talk by saying, "We will take a 10-minute break every hour." Uh-oh! I figured this talk for an hour or so. Boy was I wrong!
Since Clark and I have completed the loop and traveled the section between Florida and North Carolina multiple times, we did not have much we could learn from the presentation. The instructor was, to me, painfully detailed. He started with an overview of "what is the Great Loop" and went from there. At the end of the first hour, he was giving details of the trip to Marathon from Fort Myers. With North Carolina in the opposite direction, I knew it would take him a long time to start heading north instead of south with his talk.
So, after that first hour, I told Clark I had to go and walked back to the boat to work on my blog updates. Only when I reached the boat, I realized that Clark had all the pictures, i.e. his phone and the camera, with him at the meeting. I worked on creating the text figuring I would add the pictures later, but it was a disappointment not to be able to publish anything from the work I did.
At 5:00 I walked back to Legacy and entered the meeting room just as the talk was being concluded. How Clark managed to listen to four hours of "Welcome to the Great Loop" I will never know. He did escape briefly early in the presentation for a quick trip to the post office to mail a letter. Otherwise he stayed for the whole thing!
After left the meeting ended, we walked back to rPad with Tom and Connie so they could change from shorts and t-shirts to warmer clothing more suitable to the chill in the evening air. Then we walked the docks and met even more loopers where Clark got a chance to meet Ramie and Tim from Miss Norma.
Tom and Connie drove us back to our boat so they could take a tour. We got back just in time for Clark to grab his sunset shot of the day.
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| Sunset in Fort Myers at Edison Ford Marina |
After the boat tour (I had to drag Tom and Clark out of the engine room), we decided to eat at Pinchers, the restaurant at our marina. The only problem with that idea was that it was after 7:00, I was starving, they said it would be a 45-minute wait to eat inside, and it was downright cold outside. They had no heaters for outside dining. We left and drove to a restaurant recommended to me by the dockmaster - The Standard. We ate there and talked and talked and talked and finally left the restaurant just before 10:00.
Tom and Connie dropped us off at our marina, and I pretty much headed straight for bed. Clark followed soon afterwards.
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