Waiting for a weather window at Marco Island

Michael had become spoiled - sleeping till 0800 every day, not getting on the water before 0900.  Docking by around 1600.  Thursday night my little inside voice, that over the years I have come to heed, said "set your alarm and be gone by 0730.  So at 0600 I was up and in the shower.  And sure enough I caught the weather on the way out and they said storms in the afternoon.  So my reluctant partner and I left Ft. Myers/Estero Island at 0800 heading for Marco Island.  We had wind in the am - had all the sails up, but of course it died down when we didn't want it to!!  The day was busy trying to troubleshoot electronics: our chart plotter quit working (we use it to tell us where we are and if we are on course).  After trying forever to get that working again (likely pushing too many buttons!) we gave up and used the Ipad that we have for backup.  Our autopilot also quit working which meant we had to hand steer.  Which I admit doesn't seem like a big deal but when you have a 15 plus hour trip coming up that is a BIG deal.  Particularly, if the seas are rough as your arms get very tired after several hours of steering.  We did however manage to arrive at Marco Island before the storm hit and it did kick up wind around 30 plus mph.  That's a lot of wind when you are out in the Gulf -even in a heavy sailboat.  Decided to stay at Marco Island before we do our overnight crossing to Key West to rest up and fix our chart plotter and autopilot issues.  We did manage to fix both of those problems today - A for the day on troubleshooting!  Our eyes are to the weather and it looks like we have decided that Tuesday afternoon we will take off for Key West.  We will leave in the afternoon to try and time our arrival for daybreak.  It is not advisable to head into Key West at night - too many markers, too easy to lose your way.  Tuesday night the wind is supposed to be out of the East which will be perfect for us.  So... in honor of labor day we have decided to NOT labor tomorrow. 

Since I have not taken any pics of Marco Island yet I am sharing this pic of the sunset on our first night out to sea. Lovely!