A Total Washout

Day 252  |  Englewood   

A cold rain has fallen steadily since the middle of the night. The temperature never climbed out of the mid 50s, making Englewood feel more like Richmond ... and that's way too cold for me. The final day of the local Seafood & Music Festival was cancelled. We spent our day looking through guidebooks, tour books, and charts formulating a plan (all subject to change) to get us down to Marathon within two weeks. A lone bright spot was the opening of a new flower on my Christmas Cactus. Weird how Christmas seems like an eternity ago ... I had to go back and look at all the pictures.

A shifty, gusty wind kept us swinging around the anchorage, but there was minimal wave action and no rocking and rolling. Tomorrow morning we'll layer up in both Cold Gear and foul-weather gear and pull up the anchor. The big Rocna has set hard and buried itself deep in the sand. It should come up clean with the possible exception of some sea grass clumped on the chain. We will travel through two bridges that we'll have to request openings, but only about 18 miles to Burnt Store Marina. We will look for a sign that is familiar to us. We visited our friends Jim and Linda (Bella) in Burnt Store several years ago. We'll stay a few days and do some more car-based sightseeing of the Lee Island Coast before heading down to Marco Island and then Everglades City.