Tom, Catrina's Favorite Navigator, found a route into Charlotte Harbor that saved us at least 2 miles. Debbie held her breath as we hugged the shore and watched the depth finder creep up. The shore waves chased us downwind. If we got to 3 feet the chances of us turning around in the narrow channel and heading back into the waves successfully was very small. The depth reached 5 feet which gave us a couple feet for our hulls to go up and down over the waves. Whew!
We moved up the north shore of Charlotte Harbor and into a small inlet. On the east bank was a golf course while large homes with large boats lined the west bank. About 500 feet up a narrow, curvy stream, the river widen and we found the Pink Elephant Pier on left side and many sailboats backed into the right bank. Up river was a very low bridge. We found a spot where we could fit between two boats and dropped our bow anchor, backed into the the bank, dropped our stern anchor and tightened up.
We jumped (just kidding) into our dingy and Tom paddled across the river to the Pink Elephant (a restaurant) Pier. On our hike around Boca Grande we found the town lived up to its name--a second golf course, large residences and hotels, beautiful parks and landscaping.
The grocery was three blocks from the dock and the gulf was five. To reach it, Tom passed through a hedge!
There were a number of real estate offices with the smallest house running over 700,000 and the largest we could find for 5 1/2 Million! Now you know why there were so many real estate businesses. Our favorite is below.
That's a Tarpon. They are very large fish!
We checked out a number of restaurants and decided they were looking for a more exclusive client. We returned to the Cream Colored Catamaran for tacos and tv.
