Ready for the Big Depature

sondrawinter
9 hours ago
5 min read

We stayed a second week in Fort Myers waiting out weather and preparing, once again, for the big jump south.

Thursday, March 12 - Thursday, March 19, 2026

Matanzas Pass Mooring Balls

Once the engine work was completed by Diversified Yacht Services, we had to move off of their dock Thursday morning. Although the mooring ball assigned to us is only 1000’ to the west, it is a much quieter location. Instead of being saddled between a boat yard, several restaurants and a busy bridge, we now have residential structures on both sides of the waterway. However, during the day, we are graced by the passing of many tiki cruise/party boats, along with a pirate cruise boat. Since all noise mellows out at night, we find the boat traffic to be quite entertaining.

The mooring ball comes with access to showers and a coin laundry facility, neither were available at our dock at Diversified. Access to these amenities is available by a short walk from the dinghy dock located under the Matanzas Pass Bridge, on the Fort Myers Beach side next to Petey's Upper Deck Bar, which we never got around to visiting. There is a second dinghy dock available on the Fort Myers Beach side, about a mile east of the bridge, at the end of a residential canal that does not appear to be used much. We are not aware of any dinghy access to San Carlos Island nor the mainland, so walking across the Matanzas Pass Bridge is required to reach any businesses on the north side of the waterway.

Wildlife

Matanzas Pass appears to have a pretty healthy wildlife population. We have seen lots of dolphin and pelican actively fishing, with both hitting our hull during the process. When at Diversified we could see a variety of fish foraging off of the reef formed on the docks and piles. One evening I saw a night heron dive from our dock and come back up with a pink shrimp. Our mooring ball is near Grayson Island, which may have had some amenities on it prior to Hurricane Ian. Now it is a haven for pelicans, herons, anhinga, and probably many more species.

Local Transportation

Matanzas Pass Bridge connects San Carlos Island to Estero Island, which faces the gulf.

Tram – There is a free tram serving the west end of Estero Island, and a guide announceing the sights along the way.
Trolley / Bus – To help reduce the amount of traffic on Estero Island there are two trolleys that cost $0.75 per person. Trolley #490 connects the mainland to Estero, and Trolley #410 runs along the island. We took the 490 after purchasing groceries one day but found the schedule to be very unreliable. The bus was packed with beachgoers. Buses heading inland run $1.50 per person.
Local Taxi services – The tram guide recommended a couple of local services which we did not use.
Standard ride shares (Uber/Lyft) – there were fairly long wait times for pick ups on Estero. The one morning we needed a ride, we opted to walk across the bridge (for exercise), then have a shorter wait time from San Carlos Island.
Car rental – There are not rental facilities close to Estero Island, so we did a ride share back and forth to Hertz the one day we needed to run bigger errands.
Airport – The airport is about 20 miles from the coast. One can take the bus if they provide themselves with 2.5 hours for the ride- affordable, but time consuming. Ride shares were rather pricy. I suspect that Trippin Rides may offer the best price.

Exploring

In 2021, we drove through Fort Myers Beach and found it to be really cute. However, much of the area was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Now we find the area trying to capture some of its old quaintness, but all of the shiny new buildings constructed by those with more means seems to have washed out much of the old charm. I believe that many locals have moved on while investors picked up the damaged properties to create large vacation rentals. On each of our Saturdays during our two week stay here, we attended parades. You can almost see some assemblance of community in the parades, which I hope the area can keep amongst all of the reconstruction.

Bowditch Park is at the west end of Estero Island, and we visited it a couple of times. Most of the park is beach, but there are a few interior trails to explore. We saw a gopher tortoise on one visit.

We had thought about taking the dinghy around Grayson Island, but we never made it there. We did circumnavigate San Carlos Island one afternoon though.

Our exploration was primarily walking to run errands or visiting various restaurants.

Northside of San Carlos Island & St. Patty's Day Events on Estero

Passage Planning

After running the engine a few times with no issues with the alternator charge, nor the belt slipping, we believe that is would be safe for another attempt to head to Belize. Since we did an overnight sail to get to Fort Myers Beach, this means our four-day / four-night trip to Belize is now a five-day / five-night passage. To date our longest passage has been three days and two nights, so this is certainly a big jump for us.

When we thought we were heading to Belize two weeks ago, the weather reports were indicating a fast, sporty, upwind trip south. This time it appears that we may be motoring for a good bit of the passage with some downwind assistance. That is a long trip to have to listen to the drone of the engine, but calmer conditions usually mean fewer things to break.

Although it may add time to the overall passage, the weather allows us the option to do an overnight back to the Dry Tortugas and spend one full night at anchor. Then we will start the four-day/four-night passage towards Belize City from there.

So, part of our time this second week in Fort Myers has been filled with the typical pre-passage planning. This includes spending time studying the weather, selecting our route, trips to the grocery store and laundromat. Since we are heading out of the country we needed an updated Form 1300 (more about the form in this post). This required a trip out to the airport. When we finished our land-side boat chores Thursday afternoon and were heading back to the dinghy dock, Jimmy pointed out that we would not be on land for a full week!

One thing about this second week in Fort Myers – we have been able to transition from having many stressors to getting excited about the trip ahead (broken refrigerator, belt misalignment, broken alternator, hand swelling up since early February, work laptop failing, family member illness, big unexpected boat expenses, keeping up with boat maintenance, missing family, missing Baxter who moved into a house, and planning our largest offshore passage ever). It is interesting how when stressors pile up and they become exponential. Then given some time, what was a stressful time period has faded away to be replaced with something positive and exciting to look forward to. Hopefully we can turn this “Project Blog” back into a “Travel Blog” soon.

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