After leaving Ft. Lauderdale, i decided to take the boat to Matlacha on the Pine Island Sound for the St. Patty’s day holiday.  It is a sleepy little fishing village.  This would definately be considered “old Florida”.  The reason I visited here is that a good friend, Brad Kaiser, was staying on the island for a week.  The pics are mainly from the the little hotel i stayed at for a few days.  It was VERY cool.  Basically just a dock with 8 rooms on it.  parked the boat right outside my door.  Dolphins swam and played right off the dock.

Check out the website for the hotel if you like –

http://www.bridgewaterinn.com/

I have to admit it was the tamest St. Patrick’s day I have ever had. This is mainly thanks to Brad not being able to handle his cocktails the night before.  Oh well, i must admit it was a very welcome change.  If you know me well, you know that i lost my spleen in Florida back in 1989 on St. Patrick’s day.   And it wasn’t just a simple spleen removal!  I would have to say it might have been my first brush with meeting my maker.   For that reason, i have always been able to justify pushing the envelope a bit on this day every year.  My mother loves it!

But on this year, i spent the entire day sitting on a fish shaped Adirondeck chair reading an entire book.  The book – The Ultimate Gift.  I do recommend reading it.

Needless to say, we spent much time fishing.  I guess they call the bridge right by the hotel the “most fishingest bridge in the world”.

From here, i boated down to Ft. Myers beach for a couple nights.  The trip down was rather uneventful, although it was my first time out in open water by myself.  Furthermore, the channels were quite challenging -winding all over the place even though it appears you are in open water.  Without my Garmin chartplotter it would have been quite difficult.  I did see many dolphin and other sea creatures on the trip, but nothing unexpected.  All in all, it took me about 3 hours.  I did not push it though – even stopped to just float and make a whitebread ham & cheese sandwich with an ice cold corona.  I think at this point, i was finally able to sit back and realize – ” I am actually doing this!!”

Once i arrived in Ft. Myers beach to Fishtale marina, I met up with Sylvia & Kris Landers.  Had a great time with them.  Thanks to Sylvia for an excellent dinner!!

Next stop – boated to my next home for about a month – the Naples City Dock.  Was about a 2 hr cruise.  But was a great time. Scotty (Scott Anderson) went with me.  Stopped and fished a bit.  Caught a few, but nothing great.  fyi – the boat has never not caught fish when we have went out.  Great track record!!