Manatee at the dock

Over the memorial day holiday I went to the wharf to bring back our fishing rods and wash down the boat.  After I finished, I was winding up the hose when this manatee went under the dock in front of me.  It came out beside our boat and looked to be about 14' long.

A great sunrise this morning.

Great Memorial Day weekend

Suzanne and I spent our Memorial Day at Stardance while getting the finishing touches on the house for our next guests arriving this Sunday.

We did finally take some time for ourselves to shell, fish and relax.  Only once did we have a small adventure.  While boarding our boat, "Shall We Dance"

I

I boarded the boat and picked up the ladder and it fell out of my hand to sink to the bottom of 5' of water.  Good news it was clear, so  I jumped in the water to retrieve it.  Turned around to find the boat moving around the anchor out to deeper water where it was dropped.  I got to the boat but because of the depth of the water and my elderly age could not lift myself into the boat. We were hailed a boater, Randy and Caroline Jones, t and they rafted up to ours allowing me to use their ladder and then cross over to our boat.  We looked for the ladder spotted it and marked it on the GPS.  Tired and with a few scrapes we headed back to the house on the island.

Next morning near low tide we headed back out to find and retrieve the ladder. We finally located it and tossed the spare anchor close to it.  It didn't hold and we lost the ladder again.  We searched for about 45 minutes finding and losing
it.  Finally, the anchor dug in close and we tried all of our idea of retrieving it but to no avail.  Even the cast net wouldn't catch it.  I tried pulling our anchor across the ladder to see if it would hook it.  This did not work and also it lost its hold in the sand.  Fortunately, we had dropped the main anchor as well but with an offshore wind it pushed us away from the spot.

A group of people were walking on the beach and we hailed them to see if they would assist.  Yes, but we couldn't locate it.  We thanked the new residents to the island, the Murray's and let them go.  We pulled up the main anchor and decided to search again.  Suzanne spotted it, I dropped the main anchor and tossed the spare right on top of the ladder this time.  Did not try to set it this time.  We called out to our beach friends that were now a little up the beach for help and they graciously came back and this time retrieved the ladder.

We are now shopping for a new spare anchor.

Good day on the water May 16 2017

It was a beautiful day on the water.  Calm water and good fishing.

White bait showed up in the pass early evening with 8" large bait.

Guy with a nice non keeper Grouper

Patrick with a larger but still not a keeper Grouper.

VRBO New Fee structure

We recently sent this email to our guests the past couple of years:

You are receiving this email because you have been a valued rental guest at our home (Moondance or Stardance) on North Captiva, FL.

VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner) has changed their policies and require us to use them for our billing purposes.  This not only increases our cost for credit card use it increases your cost due to the administrative fee they charge. 

We can however book with you directly.  If you should decide to stay with us in the future please contact us direct. Since you are a valued guest we will wave the collection of the security deposit for damages.

Charles Brazik

Mobile: 239-249-1003

Email: brazik@gmail.com

Suzanne Brazik

Mobile: 239-851-8749

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Email: sbrazik@gmail.com

Guest Charlie Boyle's pics of 2017 visit

Frequent guest Charlie Boyle and his family visited North Captiva May 2017.  He sent me some of his pictures and I have selected a few of them for this post.  If you are planning on visiting North Captiva these may give you an idea of our beautiful island. You can see more of Charlie's great pictures on his flicker site, https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlieboyle999/albums

North Captiva Sunrise

North Captiva Sunrise May 8, 2017