After waiting for Mike Nelson (Scot from Dependable Divers) of Sea Hunt fame to show up & check for barnacles on our running gear and intakes and two bad weather days (it actually rained!) we are underway! After many goodbye's to our new friends at Legacy we were able to untie the dock lines and get moving. We followed Broulee down the Caloosahatchie and learned what true "trawler speed" is. Bare minimum idle speed for Tourist or 7.4 mph. Very relaxing! Once into the gulf we popped it up to 10 mph and headed offshore toward Naples. We decided to go back inside at Gordon's Pass and wind down the shallow inside route towards Marco Island to our anchorage for the night by Little Marco Island. This was the first test of our new anchor. It passed with flying colors!
Tuesday 3/31/09 Partly sunny and warm with 2' seas. Back offshore and headed for Marathon 109 miles away in the Keys. Other than dodging the thousands of crab pots it was a relaxing trip. We decided to exercise the twin Cummins a little and cruised down to the Keys at 19 mph arriving at Poncho's Fuel Dock at 3:05 pm. This was our warm up shock for fuel prices in the Bahamas with fuel here being $2.73 a gallon. We last paid $1.91 in Ft. Myers!
Our plan from here is to work our way North today and hopefully cross to Bimini tomorrow. Forecast seas for today are 3' to 5' offshore. A little to bumpy for us rookies!
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