Hygge Adventures: 035: Bad Weather, Good Friends

We left Cabbage Key on Tuesday, December 12^th with the idea of heading down to Naples, Fl to stage for picking up our son Jack from the Ft. Meyers a/p on the 16^th. It would have been a relatively short run, but there was “no room at the inn” in Naples for us. The storm from two days before was just the beginning of a week of unsettled weather and all the boats were “hunkering down.” We decided to continue on to Marco Island as we knew there was at least one nice area for anchoring there.

KatMat was able to the last available slip at Rose Marina in Marco and friends Mike and Beth Zindrick came to Hygge’s rescue by letting us tie up to their dock and have use of their house while they were back up north for Christmas. THIS WAS HUGE! Real bathrooms, hot tub, laundry, use of a car, and a dock with power! We can’t thank them enough as we were to stay there seven nights waiting for a weather window to run south to Marathon. Pretty nice setup:

Mike has a boat captain, Eddy, who watches the house and takes him to the best fishing spots in the Gulf of Mexico (I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you), and he helped us get settled. Thanks Eddy!

We had lunch on Tuesday with Nancy's former yoga instructor and friend Debra Johnson who lives in Naples now. And we generally “mooched” around the area, going to the local restaurants (Mango’s, Island Gypsy, CJ’s, Doreen’s, etc.), the beach, grocery shopping, etc.

Old Native American wall made out of conch shells:

Island Gypsy Restaurant:

On Friday morning while Nancy was visiting with Debra, disaster struck as my Surface laptop refused to turn on. After trouble-shooting the issue with my I/T-wizard-sister Caroline, it was determined that I needed to bring it in into a local shop. Verdict: laptop dead. I ordered a new one on the spot and began to scramble for all the passwords, encryption keys, etc. so the place could clone my hard-drive over to the new unit. Luckily I had backed up Thursday morning, so if worse came to worst, I was only out an afternoon's worth of work.

At noon on Friday, my h/s friend (Mary) and her husband (Jed) came down from Naples to join us for lunch and we had a nice visit. Mary and I spared Jed and Nancy too many h/s stories, and Mary, Jed and I spared Nancy too many University of Illinois stories. Jed, Mary and me:

That night Nancy and I drove up to Naples to visit with friends Amy and Steve Louis and had a lovely dinner at their amazing home. Steve is a legend in the orthopedic trauma community and is enjoying a well-earned retirement. It was great to catch up with them. (Steve and I didn’t talk about orthopedics and golf too much, we hope.)

On Saturday the 16^th, the big storm arrived and while it had high winds and a lot of rain, it wasn’t “Aunty Em” level. But still.

I was able to pick up my new laptop in the early afternoon and then we headed up to Ft. Meyers. This was the day we had to pick Jack up at the a/p. His flight didn’t arrive until 8:00 p.m. but we wanted to see some sights. We went to the Edison/Ford Winter Estates Museum. Very interesting place and history. https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/

We were able to tour the grounds during a break in the rain. The main Edison house was off limits as there was a wedding and reception on the grounds that afternoon/evening. We did seem some of the bridal party around and I heard the bride crying over the weather. I was going to tell her that, “Hey, my parents got married in a Nor'easter and they did fine,” but discretion prevailed over valor.

Nabbed this off the website, Edison's house:

Me and big tree, and it isn't even the biggest tree on the place:

We picked up Jack as scheduled and drove home in a driving rainstorm. That night Jack and Nancy slept in the house while I stayed on the boat. I had to get up twice during the night to adjust the boat fenders as there was a storm surge that brought the high tide level up to five feet vs. the normal three feet. Eddy stopped by the next morning to make sure we were ok, and we looked at the weather forecast and judged that Tuesday would be the best day for the run south as the winds were switching from the Northwest to North on Monday, and “you want to give it a day to settle down.”

On Sunday Nancy and Jack had errands to run while I did some additional reinforcing on my boat-top luggage rack. Monday found Nancy and I going to the beach to look for shark's teeth while Jack worked on applications for a summer job (he is a first-year law student at the University of Michigan). We also did some provisioning for the boat and cleaning of the house.

We didn't find any shark's teeth, but did enjoy a nice long beech walk: