Three weeks after moving from the NYC 'burbs to SW Florida, we've
finally gotten the house organized enough to think about boating
again. The 24 ft I/O cuddy is tied up out front where I can see it
from my home office, and I've been waiting all week to go for a
serious boat ride. Saturday looked like a good weather day with
temperatures in the 70s and light to moderate wind, so we headed down
our canal to the Caloosahatchie River, motored south to Red Fish point
in Cape Coral and filled up with gas.

From there it's a 15 minute run down to the junction of the
intercoastal waterway which runs north through Pine Island sound
behind Sanibel and Captiva Islands. This is an interesting stretch of
water with a lot of thin spots to avoid along the way. The channel is
marked with standard ICW day markers but there are places where they
are a bit further apart than you'd like. Thanks to the GPS and some
decent charts we stayed on track. Boat traffic was fairly light but
there were a fair number of flats boats fishing the shallows on each
side. We saw several schools of porposises in and along the ICW
channel, and every once in a while we' see a good sized fish jump in
front of us.

My goal was to circumnavigate Sanibel and Captiva by going west
through Red Fish pass out into the gulf. Conditions looked favorable
but the charts are sketchy for this area and I wasn't sure what we'd
find. There is a well marked channel between the ICW and a large
resort near the the north end of Captiva, but no marked channel
between there and Redfish Pass. The buoys in the pass are uncharted
also, and there are thin spots with breakers on the gulf side. By
watching the locals, it looked like the water along shore was
navigable, so we headed north from the resort towards the pass, going
slow and keeping a close eye on the depth sounder. No problems at
all, and never saw less than 7 feet on the sounder right up to the
deep water in the pass itself. The offshore aproach buoys are
relatively small but visibilty was reasonably good and we had no
proplem spotting the channel. It looks like it good get very
interesting on a rough day however, especially with the tide ebbing.

On the gulf side we had the water to ourselves all the way south. We
hugged the beach staying just outside the keep away buoys in about 15
feet of water. The north and middle of Sanibel are populated by
multi-mega $$$ beach homes, and the south end is mostly resorts and
condos. Water was almost flat calm in a light southerly and we were
able to run at 25 knots all the way south to Point Ybel. We elected
to cut across the flats just west of the lighthouse and never saw less
than 4 feet on the sounder but probably not a good idea on a rough day
with a low tide.

South of Sanibel, it's a turn back north to the infamous Sanibel draw
bridge, sloooow speed under the bridge to avoid the $27,000 fine, and
from there back up river completing the circle. We filled up the tank
again on the way back and it took 20 gallons. Not bad for a 50 mile
cruise, on plane, in a 5,000 pound boat.