Friday January 9, 2016
It was finally time to leave Ft Myers. Jim had gotten to know Captain Bob, who had saved the boat next to ours from sinking. Captain Bob helped us untie our lines and cast off.
It was another beautiful day, but thunderstorms were forecast for the evening. We were not going far, 22 miles, to Ft Myers Beach mooring ball field.
The river traffic was lighter than on our trip up river. We made it to our assigned mooring ball by 3pm.
We knew a storm was coming, and we could see big angry grey clouds to our north. Maybe it would miss us, we hoped. Jim rowed us 1/2 mile to the dinghy dock. A beautiful two masted sailing vessel was in port from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We explored the town and beach a bit, then had dinner at a little seafood shack. Yum!
The clouds were getting closer and the sun was setting as we rowed back to our boat, against the wind and the current. We had just made it onboard when the rain hit. Quite a beautiful lightning show from the storm.
All was going well until 7pm. We were watching a movie on Netflix when a tornado warning came over my phone. Seek shelter, it said. By this time it was dark, pouring rain, the wind was swinging us this way and that on our mooring, and the thunderstorm was in full force. Seek shelter? We were glad we had left our dinghy in the water, tied up with two lines behind our boat. If our boat was sucked up in a tornado, maybe our dinghy would not be????
The good news is that the storm passed, we enjoyed our movie, and we never saw a tornado!
Night moored behind Ft Myers Beach.