After leaving Ft. Myers Yacht Basin, our plan was to check out Ft. Myers Beach, but the weather was so nice we decided to move on to Naples. Naples has a City Dock with mooring balls and we were looking forward to using our generator and dinghy once again.
Mooring balls can be a tricky business. In Naples the mooring balls have short pendants which must be picked up by a boat hook, then a line must be threaded through the end of the pendant. The line is then drawn through the hawse pipe and cleated once inside the boat. OK that sounds really confusing, but basically a line is hooked to the mooring ball and then to the boat. The short pendant makes it difficult and we wrestled to get the line appropriately tied. Once tied, we started the generator. NOT! WHAT! Jim was beside himself and once again found himself investigating in the engine room. We called our mechanic and he drove from Ft.Myers to Naples. Once again we moved to the dock so the mechanic could fix our generator. Finally he arrived and decided it was a simple fix and the generator ran while he left. Hurrah...again! We stayed on the dock for one day and then tried....again to enjoy the mooring ball. NOT NOT!! Once again, we were foiled by the generator. After a DIFFERENT mechanic came out, the generator was fixed.
The best part of our visit to Naples was our visit with my favorite Aunt Jean. She has a house in Naples - 13 miles from the City Marina. Jim and I looked at each other and said let's ride those bikes! We need the exercise! The ride took a bit longer than we expected and we started later than we would have liked also, we had to ride a bit on a busy road, but hallelujah, we arrived and we hugged my dear 89 year old Aunt. She is so cute and our visit was wonderful. We couldn't stay long and by the time we arrived back at the marina it was mighty dark!
We also enjoyed dinner with my friend Lynn Coppel. She is darling and so wonderful! She lives on Marco Island now and looked so great!
We love meeting people as we travel and our friends Pete and Ana from Blue Yonder had suggested we visit Bad Ass Coffee. We found the shop and sat down to relax. An older gentleman, Ray, was trying to work on his computer, unfortunately with great frustration. I tried to help him and we became friendly. We laughed and chatted and we were off on our bicycles, once again, investigating the beautiful city. Later on as we rode through the city streets, we heard a loud "hello!" and we looked and saw Ray from the coffee shop. He yelled - "lock your bikes on a tree and I'll show you the City!". We waved back - GREAT! He drove us past beautiful homes and brought us to where he is living in the "in law suite" of a huge home. You will see the picture here with a new home being built next door - for the son! Ray had been a NY City policeman, iron worker, assemblyman, worked for Interpol among other things. Isn't life interesting!
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