Since our trip to Palm Island Marina Resort, we've put an uneventful boat trip or two under our lifebelts. So I've stopped shaking and now we can tell the rest of the story. (Click Here to read about the fun part of the weekend.)
Truly, we had no problems getting to this beautiful resort and, as the post says, we loved our weekend there. This picture is of our friends Don and Patty in front of us going through the Boca Grande swing bridge on the way. The water was smooth and the sun was shining.
Coming home Monday morning after our lovely weekend, though, it was a different story. We hit high winds and big waves in Charlotte Bay. Water was coming over the top of the bimini and suddenly we completely lost all power. It was too rough to go out on the bow and release the anchor. Bobbing around in the water was NOT fun at all. We were in radio contact with the other boats in our party and we had our Boats US Insurance card. We used our radio to call for a tow. It really didn't take much more than an hour for the trusty rescue boat to arrive. But it seemed like forever. Don and Patty stayed with us circling around until they knew we were safely on tow. That was above and beyond the call of duty in those conditions. We were so grateful. I guess it really wasn't as long as it seemed because they were able to catch up with the rest of the group at their lunch stop.
Here we are under tow. Not really the way you want to go into port, but we sure were happy to see him.
The Tow Captain decided conditions were much better to the north–(back the direction we had come from) and took us to Gasparilla Island Marina, about a two hour tow. Going as slow as we had to on the towboat line, the waves and water didn't seem as frightening, so the scary part of the trip was over at that point. (Except for wondering how many dollars we would spend.) Thank goodness for having that towing insurance though. The Tow Captain told Bill it would have cost $700.00 without the insurance.
The problem was fuel again. We had dirty gas in the tank because we had filled it with gasahol. The sloshing from the waves caused the alcohol to loosen the accumulated crud in the tank, and the fuel lines plugged. The Gasparilla Marina let us stay overnight in a boatyard slip. It was actually an interesting afternoon and evening. Lots of boats and activities to see and interesting characters who work there to talk to. The picture below is part of the marina's massive three and four-story covered boat dry storage facility. Some yacht-owners pay as much for for storing their boats as we do for living in our RV.
We walked to a grill-type restaurant across the lot from the marina to eat and in the evening walked about a mile into the tiny village of Placida just to look around. We talked to some people from Germany who had gone out to near where we lost power and decided it was too nasty to continue, so they returned and docked their rental sail boat in the transient side of the marina. They were hoping for it to clear up because they were only on a short vacation. (It's good to be retired; we had plenty of time!)
Very early the next morning the fuel people arrived and wow, here's a job I don't think would be fun at all. They crawled into the mid-berth of the boat, took out a hatch,opened the tank at the sending unit and circulated all the gas through a hose to a filtering machine. In about two hours,they were able to clean out the residue in the corners of the tank, polish the gas and put it back in. If it had been too fouled up to be saved, they would have disposed of it properly. Because of the new fuel standards, this has become a new full-time industry for a few people around marinas.
Bill also took the props to be reconditioned and replaced them before we put her back in the water. So we're good to go now.
Florida boating has been quite an adventure so far — moments of sheer beauty and complete calm punctuated by moments of sheer terror! We are working to eliminate the latter.
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