After a few days in downtown Ft. Myers, the weather settled down and we wanted to get back on the hook to save some money. Also, we really like the experience of being at anchor.

Tuesday was a workday for me, so we decided to try to cast off early go the short 13.7 miles to Bimini Basin before the workday started. When we had a little bit of light, we lowered the dinghy so we could take the lines off of the pilings. There was a gusty NNE wind of about 10 kts and it was just after high tide. Thankfully, exiting was much smoother than entering. We pulled out without any issues and headed south on the Caloosahatchee River.

The river was pretty smooth with very little traffic. When we could, we got up on plane and cruised at 22-23 mph. We ignored Garmin’s magenta line and followed the directions on ActiveCaptain. After passing R82, we turned to starboard and followed the channel to shore. There were a few spots that were 5 feet, but then it opened up to 7 feet as we got closer to shore. With a starboard beam current and wind, we had to tack into the current to stay in the channel. We followed the shore to enter the channel.

From the beginning of the channel, it’s about 1.75 miles at no wake to get to Bimini Basin in Cape Coral. The homes are beautiful.

When we got to the basin, there were 9 other boats already at anchor. One of them was a Looper and 5 or 6 of them looked like empty sailboats. We found a spot right after we entered the basin and dropped the hook. It was a bit closer to other boats than we normally like, but made it work. Bimini Basin is just a little pond in the channel system. It’s surrounded by homes and condos with a small park on the NE side.

We shut down and I went to work. Another wonderful day on the Loop.