Running in "Pea Soup"

So we have explained how weather plays into our travels especially wind.  But today we woke to dense fog that was completely unexpected!  We are in the process of retracing our steps from St. Petersburg to Ft. Myers then across the Okeechobee and back to Stuart where we will have canvas replaced at the boat yard.  So yesterday morning (Tuesday 3/15) we were back in a cove between Lido and Otter Keys near Sarasota.  We made the best of the foggy conditions and went to shore to walk a beach trail and hit up a restaurant for a yummy breakfast.  (Pumpkin pancakes with real maple syrup for me!!). The fog slightly cleared so we ventured out slowly.  But the day only got more foggy.

About 3/10ths of a mile ahead is a channel marker that you can just barely see.  Normally we line up with those markers and the ones we have passed to stay in the narrow ICW channel.

We are less than a 1/3rd of a mile away from a bridge we went under 

that is now invisible.

To add to the issue of visibility, are crazy Floridians who know the water, so they zipped through the fog and suddenly appeared coming straight toward us or flew past us.  It is common along the Gulf ICW to have a narrow channel that is dredged with "skinny water" (depths of 3'or less) on either side so space is an issue when you need 5'+ under the boat.  

At this point we could only see less than 2/10ths of a mile ahead of us.  So Al drove with the auto pilot following our "mouse tacks" on our wonderful Garmin GPS while I watched ahead and behind with our new stabilizing binoculars that we got each other for Christmas!  Thank you technology!!  Since we have already recently run along this part of the GICW, we have little tracks of our pathway that we took a week ago, just like Hansel and Gretle left bread crumbs to find their way home!!

Then very late in the day, around 5pm, the wind picked up and began to blow the fog away and the sun burned through and Voila!

We entered our old friend Cayo Costa anchorage with a pristine blue sky and smooth water at just after 6:15, a bit weary but pleased that our updated electronics and our team work paid off to land us just where we wanted to be!! We have now been on this loop adventure for 6 months as of 3/15!