This is our first trip to Snook Bight Marina by boat and our final trip before we head home. This particular marina is located on the back side of Fort Myers Beach.  We have visited here a few times by car and have even stayed at a hotel a few times that was located a little further down the road from here.  This marina is actually where our old 1972 42 foot Pearson is docked, but more on that later…..

We had another beautiful day to travel.  Nice and sunny, light winds.  On our trip there we of course, drove by some interesting things.  The first thing we came upon were these two statues outside of someone’s house 

It must be Neptune and Amphitrite.  Whoops!  On closer inspection I see that she is NAKED!  Hey!  This is a family blog, you people with kids….don’t let them look.  I was thinking they might be nice by our pool, but after realizing one of them is naked I wouldn’t want to cause a traffic jam in our canal ;).

As we continued our trip we drove by this brand new house they were building.  I sure hope that lovely shade of pink is the primer color and not the color of the house ;). Although if someone gave the house to me, I’d certainly not thumb my nose at it, pink or no pink.

Pink!

Then for those of you that have visited down here and have been to Nervous Nelly’s.  Here is what it looks like from the harbor

Nervous Nelly’s – yum!

Once we turned into the harbor from the ICW, it was a long, slow ride to the maria.  Which is all good for me, that just means I can take lots and lots of pictures.   The first thing we came upon was a mooring field.

Mooring Balls

Mooring fields have mooring balls that are anchored to the ocean floor and usually belong to a city, state or marina.  You are charged a fee for using these balls which it is much cheaper than dockage.  This particular field has water delivery and pump out service.  This means they come to your boat and fill up your water tank and pump out the potty, all for a nominal fee.  During “season”, all these ball have boats attached to them.  Now that “season” is pretty much over, the only people left are the “live aboards”.  Unfortunately, most of the “live aboards” have boats that are in pretty tough condition thereby giving the word “live aboard” a bad name.  We were “live aboard” and we didn’t leave our boat in that kind of condition.  I guess that is why Gary always referred to us as “long term cruisers” cause that didn’t have a negative association with it.  But unfortunately, these boats definitely looked like “live aboards”

Nice improvising on the canvas

Then there are the “live aboards” that can’t afford to pay for a mooring ball and just drop anchor any where they can find room.  This guy’s railings need a bit of work.

Love the pop of color with the purple door!

This boat has two dinghies and a cute dog peeking out the door.

They even have a dog on board

Then for those of you that have always wanted a house with a white picket fence :).

White Picket Fence

This one is for the Vampire.  Not many windows.

Wall to wall boat

So, this is where all the old house boats from the river go.

Now, if you think about it, these boats probably never leave the spot they are anchored in. So the question of the day is…..who pumps out these babies?  You betcha!  That’s why I never swim in any of these waters, give me a clean pool with chlorine any day.

Now this boat

Air Generated Electricity

uses that little thing that looks like a wind generator to generate electricity for their boat.  I would think that would work pretty well as it seems there is always a breeze down here.  And in a hurricane, he can light up the city :).

As we continued our slow pass to our final destination, we passed this house

Whoa! Looks like a hotel

They are using their shoreline to the max.  They have a few docks, some beach and look at that screen enclosure.  Man oh Man oh Schevitz!  What a house.

Then we drove by this dock

Termite issues?

they are either having trouble with termites or sea worms.  Either way, they better get it fixed or someone could get hurt.

Then we passed Moss Marine, and saw this boat

Glass bottom boat

Pretty funny looking, isn’t it?  I had to zoom in on it to see that it was for dolphin tours.  They call it the “Big M”.  What ever it is, it takes the prize for the weirdest boat I’ve seen in a long time.

After our long slow enjoyable ride, we finally arrived at the marina 

After we tied up, the first thing we looked for was our old boat

Pearson in 2007

10 years later

Those railings need a little work, not to mention the rub rail.

Poor baby.  Florida has been hard on you 

But once we got past our old boat on our way to the ships store, there was this guy cleaning fish.  You should have seen the HUGH tarpon swimming around with the cat fish

big fish

5 and 6 footers!

And ya know what?  These are only for catch and release down here.  You can’t keep them if you catch them.  Although I have also been told that they don’t taste very good anyway.  They were amazing to look at though.

They had a nice pool (on the second floor) and a big area for shade, which of course I liked. There was a Publix grocery store right next door and when you could cross the street and walk out on the beach on the gulf side of the island.

While some of the people we were with checked out the hot and sunny beach, I was sitting in the cool breeze and shade.  As I was sitting there, this little cutie walked by

Lennie the Pit Bull

This is Lennie, he is 10 years old and has arthritis in his back legs.  He looked like an over grown pot belly pig.  He sure was friendly though.  Apparently, he is the maria mascot and sits up by the out-door bar a couple of times a day and greets people and dogs alike. Although he doesn’t sniff the people’s butts :).

After a fabulous (but expensive)(I guess we can’t go to Denny’s all the time) dinner at the marina , we noticed the awesome full moon

Harvest Moon

I just had to get a picture.  Unfortunately, the second night had a few more clouds

Makes it look spookier, but cool none the less.

By Friday, it was time to go home.  We left early because there was supposed to be more wind in the afternoon.  More wind means more waves, the First Mate doesn’t care for the waves too much.   At least there wasn’t any fog this time.  We did pass this house with this cool window

Nice Stained Glass Window

I like all the different little flags in the window too.

Once we got back to the harbor area, we passed all the shrimp boats

Big fleet!  I’ve heard they go shrimping at night so that is why they are all in dock this morning.

We made it home safe and sound before the heat wave hit.  All in all it was a nice trip and a great marina.  Always fun to get together with our boating buddies ;).