Day 44 - Naples to Marco Island - Perfect Timing!

After breakfast on the boat, Captain Randy washed the boat and checked on the wind and wave conditions to Marco Island and Key West.  We stopped in the clubhouse to use the internet.  Almost all of the marinas we have visited offer internet service, but it tends to be very slow on the dock.  So apologies again for getting behind on blogging, but it can be very time-consuming with the slow service, especially uploading pictures.  We walked back to the Tin Shed area and 5^th Street for a daytime look and pictures.  One of the stores had a cat wandering inside their display windows and I couldn't resist taking it's picture.

At 11:32 a.m. we left Naples and I texted our friends Jen Finkl and John Koutoupis, who we had planned to meet up with in Marco Island.  Jen, her 2 kids Ally and Nick, and John had flown in Naples the night before.  They were in a rental boat on the way to Marco too. They were travelling on the ICW but we went out to the Gulf so we would not have to continually slow down for small boats.  I let them know where we were docking and we agreed to meet up there.

It was another beautiful day in paradise and only 1 foot waves on the Gulf.  South of Naples the visible shoreline was sand and trees.  As we neared Marco Island, more homes came into view.  We took the Capri Pass off the Gulf into the ICW and there were our friends!  Despite our different routes, we all arrived at the entrance to the channel to Marco Island at the same time.   We were excited to meet up with friends again on our trip! They followed us to our marina in Marco, The Marina at Factory Bay.  More floating docks made the First Mate very happy.  The six of us sat on Kristin Says, watching a dolphin who swam around the boat for several minutes, giving us quite a show.  We could see that he had a fish in his mouth.

 

 

John ferried us over to the Snook Inn Restaurant and Chickee Bar for lunch.  Some of us had very tasty grouper sandwiches and Ally got the key lime pie she had been wanting.  At the gift shop, Jen bought us a Snook Inn Christmas ornament for the tree on our boat.  John dropped us back at our boat and they went back to Naples.

We walked to Café de Marco for dinner.  Randy had their specialty, giant prawns and I had a seafood “stir-fry” dish.  Both were excellent.  We have had wonderful seafood since we hit the Gulf in Mobile, so good that we don’t want to order anything else.

 

Later, Randy did some laundry and I hung our new ornament on our tree, very special as it was given by a friend.  What a perfect day!