Day 18 : Uh, Oh

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Venice Beach, Florida – Fort Meyer’s, Florida (84 mi)

Leaving Venice at high tide so we could easily take the intercostal channel, we wanted to stop in Lemon Bay; the diesel gas was significantly cheaper.  Everything was going along great.  We crossed multiple bridges some of which had to open just for us, stopping regular traffic.  We accidentally missed our turn for the fuel dock so we had to turn around in the channel.  Just as I was about to tell Jacob that we were out of the channel and it looked like something was ahead we hit something!  AHHHHH!  He immediately stopped the props.  We weren’t moving so we knew we hit ground.  As he reversed slowly we could hear the grinding and crunching of rocks.  Uh,oh!  No bueano.  It looked like we hit coral.  The gentleman at the fuel dock said there is a bunch of oysters out ther so maybe that’s what we hit.  It’s crazy because we weren’t even 10 feet off the green aton, marking the edge of the channel and we only draft(how deep our boat sits in the water) three feet.  After fueling and returning to normal speed we noticed the boat was vibrating, a sign of a damaged prop.  We keep trucking along also noticing that our speed was significantly reduce.  Our boat seems hurt.  We make arrangements to stop in Fort Meyers at the Yatch Basin Marina, one of the only marinas in the area with transient slips available.  Coming to Cape Coral area and entering the Caloosahatchee River the blueness of the water changes to a caramel tint from the pollution.  It’s such a drastic difference from the water we were basking in yesterday at Venice Beach. 

                                                      Look at how nasty the water looks

Jacob knows when we arrive at the marina he will have to get into the water to check out the prop.  Yuck!  He stuck his foot into the water and it disappeared just inches below the surface.  Visibility is about 2-3 inches at most.  He is doubtful he’ll be able to tell if there is damage to the prop, but he goes under anyway almost hitting is head on our trim tabs.  He can’t see anything so he gets out and rinses off.  With no success he calls a local diver who laughs and says, “welcome to my world.”  This water is a syrupy brown like Coca-Cola.  The viscosity of it has to be thicker than regular water, it moves different.  No one fishes or gets in the water.  The government recently tested the water discovering it is three times worse than sewage.  It doesn’t smell, but the bacteria count is so high that even catfish die here.  That’s so gross!  I bet it used to be beautiful here before it became over populated.

The divers will be in the area tomorrow so they offer to look at our prop for free.

We need some groceries.  A free taxi service in the area called Nickel Ride is going to bring us to a nearby Publix.  They service a 2 mile radius in Downtown Fort Meyers which our marina and Publix are in.  They wait for us while we shop and then bring us back home.  All we have to do is tip the driver.  Such a convenient service!  What’s even more convenient is that Joie and Jayden stayed at the marina to do our laundry!