We had one final boat trip before we left up north.  This one was going to be to Naples Maria.  We have never been there before so I was excited to see the place, especially the boat and homes.  Naples is kind of a high end city so I expected jaw dropping homes and boats.

We started out early as it was going to be about a 3 hours ride, one of our longer ones and for quite a bit of the trip we had to travel out in the Gulf.  We’ve been out in the Gulf before, but always on our conditions.  Today we had to go no matter what the weather.  The seas were only supposed to be 2 feet.  By the time we hit the Gulf, the waves seemed a tad bigger than 2 feet.

Bumpy ride

We traveled about 8 miles from shore.  Supposedly this was a smother rider than in closer.  You could have fooled me ;).  You can see from the picture above how small the sky line looked.  Hopefully the boat doesn’t break down, I’d hate to have to swim that far 😦 .

Luckily, Gary had just gotten the auto pilot fixed, thanks to one of our friends in the boat club (he loves tinkering on electronics).  The boat travels so much better when you can use the auto pilot, you’re not constantly correcting the wheel every time you hit a wave.   The auto pilot is way easier on the Captain’s arms too.

When we got to the section where we had to turn into, Gordon Pass, the tide was coming out.  With the waves as high as they were and the narrowness of the pass, it made for quite the ride getting in.

Big waves in the pass

Here is what it looked like when we left, 2 days later

Smooth as glass

A much better way to travel.

Once we got into Gordon pass and took a left, we started heading toward the marina.  The houses were amazing!  This house belongs to Danielle Steele I am told

Pretty in Pink

Home made of large flat stones

Exterior of home

Oooooh, Pretty!

Of course there weren’t many ugly homes along the way ;).

Nice big Lounger

This was by someone’s pool.  You could have 5 or 6 people lounging on this baby!

And see this building?  That thing is almost bigger than my condo building!  Just think of the boat it could house!  Mam oh man.

Yes….that is a place to put a boat

It is a place to put your boat, on a lift.  I’d love to see the inside of the house if this is just for the boat.

As we neared the marina, I saw this boat….

This boat has a garage!

Two girls are talking one of the “toys” out of the “garage” of the boat.  The only toy we could pull out of our “garage” would be maybe a rubber ducky :).  Besides, I thought the guys would enjoy the nice shot of the posterior…….I mean the transom of the boat.

When we finally arrived at the maria, they put us in an 80 foot slip

Little boat in Big slip

We wook so widdle .

There was wind and current but once we go between the two big boats on either side of us, the wind dropped to nothing as did the current making for a smooth landing.

The marina offered a gas dock, inside storage for boats, condo’s and it looked like performed some maintenance work.  These slips are all owned by individual owners.  When the owners take their boats north to get out of Hurricane waters, they rent out their slips.  I wonder who got our dockage money, the owner or the marina?????  We could never have gotten into this place during season, it would have been packed.

It was pretty hot, so as soon as we got all tied up and made sure the air was on, we headed for the pool.  We had to pass by this boat to get to the pool.  Watch your head!  In order for you to judge the size of the anchor, I had Gary stand next to it.

Size of anchor compared to Gary’s head

That’s some spicy meatball…I mean, anchor.  Pretty dang big and so shiny!

The pool had a bar area (minus the booze)

Bar at pool

but great for shade.

Pool

It had lots of nice shade in the afternoon.  Good for white skinned Colleen.  They were painting the condo buildings and had scaffolding all around the building.  The pool was located really, really close to the condo building.  So close that they dropped a bucket from the second floor and it landed in the pool area.  Luckily it was almost empty and no one got hit in the head.  But wait a minute….we could of gotten free dockage!  Darn.

The first night of all our boat trips we always have hors d’oeuvres.  Here is the place they let us use

Big Bar with fridge

A pool table

And they actually let you play pool.

Tables to eat at

Lounge tables

TV room

And the bathrooms were really nice.  (I tried to take pictures but the girls kept screaming and running around).

We even got Birthday cake

Birthday Cake – Yum!

The next morning we walked to breakfast.  On our way we saw some pretty notable boats.  Check out the out drives on this one

1600 horse

In case you can’t read them, they are 400 HP a piece.  If you do the math that’s 1600 HP.  Come on!  Do you really need to go that fast?  what ever happened to taking time to smell the roses?  And you can’t see very well but this boat is kind of a pumped up pontoon boat.  It has an open bow and a huge swim platform.  I bet it had a huge price too.

Now this boat HAD to have pod drives.

Tight docking

Or else it is a lot of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to get into this very tight slip.  And the slip is at a dead-end too which makes it even harder to maneuver.

On the second night, the boat next to us had their lights on.  Look at this cool window

Cool window in sport fisherman boat

I guess I am not sure if they had cabin lights on or if the window itself had lights.  Either way, pretty cool.

This rather unusual boat showed up at the gas dock the next morning

Looks like a race car

I have no idea what kind of a ride people go for in that boat, but it is definitely a fair weather boat and one that’s in need of a little wax.

We could only stay 3 days as we had to get our little tails back to the condo to load up for the ride home.  So we headed out early on the third day.  Not far from the marina, this helicopter was flying very low

Spraying for bugs?

back and forth, back and forth.  I don’t know if he was admiring our boat or spraying for bugs 

The Gulf was a little calmer than it was when we came there but we heard it was like glass for those that left the following day, lucky them

Then when we were almost to the miserable mile, we saw a Navigator

Aaaaaah, a Navigator

Even after 3 years, I still miss that boat 

Another fine boat trip and another great marina.  We’ll have to see what kind of adventures we can get into up in the northern country.  TTFN.