The whole going aground and leaning over a solid 35 degrees in Venice thing was one of the most hysterical, random, surprising experiences of this trip. We could literally stand on the wall inside the boat like some terrible N’Sync music video, which was hilarious because our too-tall selves could finally stand all the way up. Its the little things…

Luckily the boat was undamaged and our worn-out spirits were brought back to life with every laugh. When we we got going again we headed south, but not before noticing someone else had parked their boat in the exact spot we had the other day…

Granted, the tide didn’t rush out from under them nearly as much, but they were stuck for a couple of days and seeing that mistake right after ours felt validating.

On the way south from Venice…

So we’ve now been in Fort Myers Beach since January 27th and we’re leaving right after St. Patty’s Day on March 17th. That means we will have spent seven weeks here. Thats a solid 45 days longer than we expected…

And its been a blast, but thats for the next entry.

We tried to leave on January 29th (or something like that) and the water pump on the beloved old 3QM went out. I popped it off and saw the solid metal driveshaft for the pump had just broken off. I’m talking some serious metal straight up breaking… ugh.

So we now had to call BoatUS again to get the boat towed from our little emergency anchorage to a mooring ball. We hadn’t met anyone down here yet and my first reaction was to call for a tow. In retrospect, we probably could have managed to tow the boat with the dinghy… not to mention the BoatUS boat engine died two or three times while we were adrift in the mooring field…

Anyway, our time in Fort Myers Beach was all about getting Contigo running again and then enjoying Spring Break like a bunch of locals. And that, we did.