8 day trip, day 3

We arose at sunrise and tip toed out of our anchorage at Lover's Key under sail... No motor on this beautiful quiet morning after sleeping to the sound of waves crashing on shore. A nice off shore breeze lifting us away...

Quite early in the day the winds died down and up went the flasher sail! She is a beautiful sail... Had a great time flying her all day from about 10am to about 4pm from north of Naples all the way down to south of Marco Island. I bet she looked pretty impressive out there on that beautiful day! After 6 hours of being at the helm with sail line in one hand and wheel in the other, it was time to take her down and get ready for sunset/darkness and crossing the Cape Romano Shoals...
Another gorgeous southwest Florida sunset with a sliver moon...
First time crossing the shoals and at night, we took the "safe" route with lots of water, eyes almost constantly on the depth sounder... Took about an hour to cross the shoals and as we did so the winds continued to build out of the north-northeast... By the time we were on the east side of the shoals we were sailing upwind into some decent winds as I decided we'd head into Panther Key (as opposed to further south and further away) for the night. Peppermint Patty was not liking the growing bay chop and the sound of the winds whiping through the sails and causing the halyards to bang on the mast, not to mention the motor had been running as we passed through the shoals just in case... Pirate Patty is never very happy when the motor is running. She kept meowing from down below - not a happy camper. At the helm I wasn't too happy either... It was a great upwind sail, but without something to block the wind, the wind burn can get brutal after a long day under the sun. It was also Florida cold to me. A couple hours later we were getting ready to enter the channel to the Panther Key anchorage. Ahead was this bright light, which I couldn't discern at first. It seemed a boat, then it seemed a huge bonfire gone awry and burning the island... But alas, as we got closer, it was just a large bonfire... the problem was that that fire hampened a sighting on the anchor light of a sailboat that suddenly appeared out of the darkness to our starboard as we slipped through the narrow swath into the protected bay... yikes! There is a little added stress coming into anchor in the darkness of night. The land masses seeming to loom over... constantly on the lookout for anchor lights and perhaps boats without anchor lights...
Speaking of anchor lights. All trip we were using a new anchor light that we named "Ahab." Ahab is a good low amp anchor light that we connected to a small 12V battery out in the cockpit. Anchor light "Ahab" was given to us by our friend, whose nickname just happens to be... Ahab ;) Thank you Ahab!!

We dropped anchor at about 10pm. a long day... Even though it was late, I forced us to eat some hot vegetable soup to keep our strength up and our nightly ritual of echinacea tea for the immune system. Then we fell out of the awake world into slumber... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........