Marco Island to Naples

After a couple of excellent days in Marco Island, we set sail for Naples, which is about 15 miles north. We had the option to sail offshore or up the Calhoun Channel. We thought it might be fun to head up the channel. Who knows, perhaps we’d see an alligator or swamp monster or something. Winding through the mangroves was a fantastic experience, though the powerboats zipping by us did get a little tiresome.

In Naples, we took a mooring ball at the city dock and took the dinghy (did I mention that our dinghy is called “Trailer Trash?”) ashore and walked into town to view the historic home, Palm Cottage.  Not a super exciting tour, but we enjoyed getting off the boat for a couple of hours and getting some exercise.

As we were walking into town, we passed a marine store that had a great looking RIB dinghy for sale with a 40 HP engine and center console steering station. We really would like to have a slightly larger dinghy with a center console, so we stopped to take a look. The salesman was great and offered to let us test drive it, so agreed to meet him the next morning.

I have to say that we LOVED the ride of the new dinghy. In conditions that would have soaked us aboard “Trailer Trash,” we were zipped around the bay at 30 Kts. We motored over to Double Wide to see how it fit on our davits — it would, with some adjustment.

We returned the boat to the salesman with a promise to think it over and got back in our old worn out dinghy and headed down the bay for lunch at Tin City and a little shopping. After lunch we let loose the lines and headed north with plans to stop at Wiggins Pass. More details in the next post…