Tarpon Point – Pink Shell Cruise

On March 11th six boats, Cookin’, Nauti Buoy, No Agenda, Sweet Lips, Sachmo and Too Many Wakes Boated up to Tarpon Point Marina at Cape Coral. Unfortunately, our Cruise Leaders, the Skillerns, were land-locked with a mechanical issue on their boat and were unable to join us. The weather was great on our departure day and we had following seas of only about one foot. This was the maiden MBYC Cruise for Mark and Joanne Daugherty on No Agenda who said they couldn’t wait to cruise with us again!

Since our last cruise to Tarpon Point improvements have been made at the marina and the Dockmaster was among the best we have had. The six of us were all docked in a row along the face side of their new floating dock which is straight out from the hotel bar and pool. It was a great place to be docked and the Dockmaster even provided tables and chairs for our Docktail Party right on the dock beside Nauti Buoy. The entire marina staff was excellent.

Also new to the Tarpon Point Marina are two new restaurants, one Italian that we did not make it to and the other is a new Pinchers restaurant that we all enjoyed. In addition, and I believe a first for MBYC, the 12 of us boarded Too Many Wakes for an evening boat ride to Rum Runners for dinner. We returned right at dark to find the Dockmaster holding our slip so that no one docked in our spot while we were at dinner.

As always, the girls played cards while the men played Mexican Train and before you knew it our four days were up and we bid goodbye to No Agenda and Too Many Wakes who headed back to Marco on the 15th while the other 4 of us headed on to Pink Shell. The only problem was it was very foggy that morning so our departure was delayed a bit and then we still encountered fog at the Sanibel Bridge but found our way to Pink Shell by going slow and using our radar.

The Grahams arrived at Pink Shell from Fisherman’s Village at the same time the Tarpon Point boats arrived and the Browns and Hubschers were also meeting us that day at Pink Shell. The Browns rode in about 15 miles of fog that morning while the Hubschers waited it out by ducking into Hamilton Harbor for lunch.

On the 16th we were joined at Pink Shell by the Geschreis, on A-Blast, making a total of 8 boats at Pink Shell. Once again, the Dockmaster was able to dock us all together making for a great time.

Docktails, cards and lying around the pool were the order of the day for our four days at Pink Shell. While we were there we also managed to find a few places to eat including the pool for lunch, Docktails the first night, Pastabilities, Fresh Catch and Bongos the other three nights and a few people even managed to eat on their boats a time or two.

Other boaters from Marco were also spotted on the dock at Pink Shell so we took advantage of the opportunity to promote membership in MBYC by inviting a few guests to join in our fun. Hopefully, we made a good enough impression to result in a membership application down the road.

It was another great MBYC cruise and we are already looking forward to the next one!

Brent
Co-Leader with Charlie Skillern