As you know, we belong to a boat club down here.  Each member is in charge of setting up a boat trip.  When your year comes up, you pick a month and then you decide on the place to go to, gather all the information for the boats and the people who are coming, make the reservations at the marina, obtain a meeting place to have our pot luck dinner, find a suitable restaurant and make reservations there, search out transportation to the restaurant if it is not in walking distance, greet each boater as they arrive, set up for the pot luck, make sure everyone is having a good time, and last but not least, make sure everyone gets off the dock when it is time to leave.  Then when you arrive home, you park your boat and break out a Honey.   So in other words, it’s a lot of fun 

The day we left the water was a little rough

Seas are a little rough

It was a tad chilly 65 ° and 16 MPH winds.  The cold weather and windy conditions weren’t going to stop the die-hard fishermen

Brrrrr, we have to wear our hoodies to go fishing

and the Sheriff has to go out no matter what   I bet they weren’t pulling anyone over today making any checks, it was just too darn cold for those Floridians.

We just kept plugging away and were the first to arrive at the marina, Pink Shell.  At the marina’s down here, they always have one or two guys to help you tie up and if you are having problems, they even tell you which way to turn your wheel.  Although Gary didn’t need any help with which way to turn the wheel, I certainly appreciated the help with the lines 

The wind was blowin pretty good and the tide was also going out so the rest of the people had an interesting docking experience.  I should have had my camera going ;).  Most of them backed in which presented a more challenging docking, but everyone made it thru with flying colors!

Later that day we had our Hors d’oeuvre on the deck right outside the ships store

I’ll have another drink 😉

Gary and I had contacted the maria manager several months in advance of this trip and the hotel was going to allow us to use a room to have our pot luck dinner.  The hotel is located right across the street from the marina, so it’s nice and close.  We had checked with the marina manager that morning and he told the room was all ready.  He took us over to show us the room and then gave us the key so we could get back in.  So after our Hors d’oeuvre we gathered everyone and all their food and all their drinks and we traipsed across the street to this room.   I proceeded to open the door to the room and huh…..those doors weren’t open when we were here before…..and the tables weren’t set up in that order either….what the heck is going on here?!  “Can I help you?” a big guys asks us.  I proceeded to tell him how we have the room reserved for the evening thru the maria manager.  He tells me he is setting up for a meeting that is happening first thing in the morning.  I tell him I knew about the meeting and we were going to put the tables back the way we found them and take out the trash.  He tells me we can’t have the room.  I tell him I reserved this room months ago thru the marina.  He tells me the marina manager has no authorization to reserve rooms in the hotel and besides that, we can’t bring our own food in here.  Oh I say, “crap” I am thinking.  Now what are we going to do?  Think quick Colleen.  You have a bunch of people here with their hands full of food and they are getting snippy with this guy.  Ok!  I remember all the meals we had on our dock at Sunnyside.  That was always fun, hopefully it will be just as much fun.  So we all trudge back to the marina.  Gary pulls out all the collapsible tables we bought along and people start putting their food on the them.

Pot Luck on the Dock

We stole some chairs from the deck by the ships store and all was good except it was still pretty windy, and kind of cold and some of them had to sit in a few boats so they didn’t freeze their patubee’s off…..so maybe not as much fun as the parties on the dock at Sunnyside but what can you do?  One day down, two to go.

I stopped at the ships store the next morning to give the manager the heads up that we got yelled at by some big goon when we tried to use the room he told us about.  The manager wasn’t there, he was called over to the hotel for a meeting with management.  Oh oh!  I told the guy, I hope he wasn’t in trouble for what happened last night.  The guy tells me “Oh No, he’s fine.  They have these meetings all the time, he’s not in trouble”.  About an hour later the manager shows up at our boat.  He got in trouble.  The hotel changed their rules several years ago and decided that people from the maria couldn’t use the room and bring in their own food, they just never told him.  So he got a butt chewing and he apologized to us left and right.  I just felt bad he got in trouble because of us. 

The next day we decided to walk down to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at (when we made the reservations they were remodeling the place so we were keeping our fingers crossed they finished on time).  We didn’t have enough food on our boat to feed all these people if the restaurant wasn’t open so we figured we better check it out ahead of time.  We decided to walk the beach (only a mile down).  We found this nice sand castle

Professional looking sand castle

I was impressed, they even had little palm trees by it.  We got to the restaurant and all was well.  They had our reservations and the place was still standing.  Good we are all set!

Some people walked to dinner, others took the Trolley.  The Trolley only took exact change so I brought along a container of quarters in case people in the group didn’t have the exact change.  Just like the scouts motto, be prepared!

Everyone seemed to  have a nice dinner that night and started walking home along the beach

Beautiful Sunset

Some of us got side tracked by the call of the bars at Time Square on Fort Myers Beach

Bars and music

So we had to stop and have a few.  By the time we left the bar it was REALLY dark on the beach.  I had to use the flashlight on my phone to see where we were so we didn’t accidentally walk past our hotel.  Those dang kids that dig those holes in the beach!  Good way to get yourself killed walking down a total black beach, slightly inebriated and fall in one.  Parents!  Please be courteous to those drunks weaving down the beach at night and fill in your kids holes.  Luckily, none of us fell in a hole.  End of day two.

The final day when we awoke,  it was still pretty windy.  Everyone got off with the help of the marina manager and other people pushing and holding the boats away from the dock.  We were the last ones to leave.  Whew!  That’s over with…….until we have to do it again sometime.  Maybe because our trip was so bad we won’t have to do it again….we can keep our fingers crossed.  Right now though, I think it’s time for that Honey!

Cheers!