8 day trip, day 2

Sunday, Day 2. After dining on scrambled eggs, toast, mango, and chai tea, we lifted anchor and set sail down the ICW behind the barrier island areas of Cayo Costa, Captiva, Sanibel. A beautiful morning. Southeast of Pine Island, east of Sanibel is an area of the ICW my sailing friends lovingly term the miserable mile. I'm going to have to double check with them on this because I'm pretty sure it was a miserable FIVE miles... maybe only four... I termed the miserable four miles, sheer hell ;) you'll need to read day 1 to understand that internal joke ;)
Sheer hell is a narrow swath cut into the shallows, waves breaking to both sides in some locations, large floating condos motoring by and throwing large wake tossing us around like old shoes, other boats speeding by with some at dangerous speeds (who are these you know whats?).
Prior to getting to sheer hell I had dropped the sails as we were heading pretty much straight into the wind, and there wasn't much wind to be had at this point in the day, not to mention I didn't want to see the sails flogging brutally as we were tossed in the wakes.
Luckily it was a beautiful sunny warm Florida winter day to enjoy being out on the water.
Finally we make it through "sheer hell" and the new Sanibel Bridge is in our sights (see pic).
Once through the bridge the winds were back up and we raised the sails and sailed out into the Gulf.
We sailed past Ft. Myers Beach and again under a dark starry sky we set anchor, just off shore of Lovers Key.