Cabbage Key

6.17

We happily left Ft. Meyers Beach today and headed farther north towards Sanibel and Captiva. We decided to go the ICW route, even though that meant that we wouldn't be sailing. It took us about 5 hours to motor past Sanibel and Captiva and slightly north of there to a small island called Cabbage Key. (Although we wanted to stop at Sanibel, there were no good anchorages and we didn't want to deal with marina fees) Cabbage Key is well-known to West Coast boaters as you can only get there by boat. It is an extremely small island with a few houses on it along with a restaurant and a small inn that offers a handful of rooms or several cottages. Daily, 3 tour boats from the surrounding areas bring in tourists to dine in the restaurant that is said to have inspired Jimmy Buffet's "Cheeseburger in Paradise". We took Koa in to land for a little walk and to explore the island. There are no roads only dirt and only golf carts and lawn mowers get its few inhabitants from place to place.
The restaurant was quaint and looked out over the water. There was no air conditioning, only 4 beers available and no refills on sodas - all we assumed due to the boat only nature of the island.
Our waitress was wonderful and did actually live on the island. The food was good, although very overpriced. When you're the only option on the island I guess you can do that! They atmosphere was good though and all in all we were glad we had stopped in.
Having done all there was to do there, we headed back out to the mothership. We had a treacherous crossing over ICW channel where some manatee killer...I mean power boat, almost ran us over. And then had the gall to show us his middle finger! Seriously?! We were in a dinghy moving 1/20 the speed he was and he was mad because he had to move over to go around us?! Point in case as to why I never wave to powerboats.
We tucked in early in preparation for an early rising to watch the USA soccer match in the morning. GO USA!!