To St. James City, then onward to Cayo Costa

Part one, the beach to St. James City

We did something today that we've only done once before, and oddly thought we'd do a whole lot of while on the loop. We boated to an eatery.

While in Canada we boated to Henry's, which is a little seafood place on a little island. They had docks big enough for boats like us. We docked, ate, then headed out and anchored for the night in a nearby bay.

Today we boated to St. James City. We wanted to go to a restaurant we ate at years ago, when we were doing the RV thing, Woody's. We anchored out, hopped in the dinghy, and went up the little canal (Monroe Canal). We tied off on the wall right in front of the restaurant. 

Monroe Canal, and the little houses on it

The trip down the little canal was a bit like traveling back in time. The houses there are small, a number of them are trailer homes or prefabricated houses, all of which have small docks on the canal. No grandiose, multi-million dollar places here - they're on the island of course, but just not here.

Woody's didn't disappoint. We split a salad, conch fritters, and a grouper reuben, one of our favorites.

From there got back to inQuest, hauled up the anchor, and headed for Pelican Bay off of Cayo Costa. We spent a night there about a year ago; the first night we "officially" spent on the loop.

Woody's!

The only exciting thing that happened was Radio Waves. This is a big, blue, crazy fast boat that really, really, really needed to get somewhere. He was heading our direction, of course, which makes these things tougher, and the channel through here is fairly narrow, so there's not a lot of room to get out of his way (and he made no effort to get out of ours). Russ was at the helm when they passed us. He underestimated just how big the wake was, until glasses tipped over, dogs skid across the floor, and papers got scattered everywhere. (We weren't really "battened down" for a crossing, as it turned out.) Ahead Radio Waves made a turn off the channel heading for (we believed) Tween Marina. Good riddance. About an hour later, however, I noticed a boat coming up in the rear view. I looked over my shoulder and SURE ENOUGH here comes Radio Waves -- just as fast, just as rude. This time we dove in right behind him, which helped a bit. Still rocked, but not as long. The bozo.

Anyway. We got anchored without any issues, and took the dinghy over to the island to walk the dogs. 

In the continuing saga of "new boat blues" we had noticed that out port engine's battery was always low of charge. Russ knew the batteries needed to be replaced anyway, so we did that back in Naples. However, even with the new batteries, when we start the engines the port battery is still low. This morning, when we started out, the engine wouldn't even kick over. He jumped it, but now we have yet another mystery on our hands. 

We plan on staying here for a couple of nights. It will be interesting if we need to call Sea Tow to get us to our next destination.

Lovely sunset on Cayo Costa

PS. More new boat blues -- Just as we were about to walk the dogs one last time, our dinghy, which performed flawlessly 3 times today, would not start. Oy.