Great Loop Adventures Aboard Next Chapter: It wouldn’t be any fun if there wasn’t challenges

From One Extreme to Another

After getting an on the ground view of the utter devastation in Ft Meyers we headed 32 miles to Naples. Now for those of you who don’t know Naples it is the land of plenty. It is probably one of the highest concentrations of Uber wealthy.

We are talking homes in the tens of millions where each one has at least one exotic car in the garage. They have a general aviation airport where the end of the approach runway is right at Naples City dock where we picked up a mooring ball for 4 nites. Heck at $16/nite it was hard to beat. The airport caters to the Lear, Gulfstream and Citation jet crowd. On Friday there was one landing about every three minutes!

I bet that costs a whole lot more than what we paid for a mooring ball. The marina has a great restaurant onsite called appropriately The Dock and is a walk to both Historic down town and 5th Ave. We were very excited to have Kevin and Tina make a repeat visit for the weekend. Yep you read right. We now have guests that have visited twice! The rest of you are really missing out!

So they arrived right on schedule so the weekend was off to an early start. First thing was to pack provisions for an amphibious assault of the interior waterways to gawk at the opulent waterfront homes. All I can say is WOW! Later we wandered into town for a late dinner after which we called it a night.

Saturday morning we walked back into town where there was a great farmers market going on. After sampling all the offerings we decided to walk over to 5th Ave where the Annual Naples Art Show was going on. It was 10 blocks of some of the most high end art you could imagine.The pieces had a price to match.

Kevin invited his Uncle Glen who lives in North Naples for lunch. Really nice fellow from Rochester, NY.

Dinner was another event that is hard to describe. We went to this grocery store Called Oak Farms Seed to Table. No we did not shop and cook on the boat. We actually ate and danced in the grocery store. I kid you not.

This place is a big store that also has a couple of micro restaurants inside along with an option to pick out a protein of your choice then select a couple of sides to go with it. Then they cook it to order for you.You can then go buy a bottle This place is a big store that also has a couple of micro restaurants inside along with an option to pick out a protein of your choice then select a couple of sides to go with it. Then they cook it to order for you. You can then go buy a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer and bring it to wherever you want to sit. They have a small stage and a dance floor upstairs where you can work off those calories from the delicious prime steak you just devoured. We just cracked up!

Sunday we made the trek to Stans Idle Hour and Buzzard Bar in Goodland just below Marco Island. It is an iconic place where several hundred people show on a Sunday to listen to music and drink cold beer. In February they have the famous 3 day Mullet Festival where a 1000+ gather. We returned to the boat and said our goodbyes to Tina and Kevin as they were jetting back to VB.

What a fun filled weekend. Back on the boat I had been monitoring a low voltage issue with the house batteries. I did a little checking and found a dead cell in one of the four batteries. So I disconnected it from the bank and ran the generator for a couple of hours to recharge.In the morning the house bank had dropped again to 11.7 volts enough to know that’s too low.

That meant that we needed new batteries. So Tuesday morning we moved the boat to the dock and began the process of changing batteries. Now our boat takes 4 8d batteries. Don’t need to know what that means other than each one weighs about 120 lbs. To make matters worse they live in the lowest part of the boat. So how do we move each battery from the engine room, up the stairs to the sundeck, down the stairs to the dock, from the dock into a truck? So after giving Sue a pep talk we went at it with a can do attitude. The two of us were able to remove the old ones, put them in a Home D truck, get new ones and put them back into the boat by 2pm that day, all without anybody getting hurt! Can you say Team Work! If it wasn’t for theses challenges that happen to everybody it just wouldn’t be as much fun. OK you caught me that was a line of crap. BUT! It is all part of the adventure.