Our plan wasn’t really to go to Big Carlos Pass, we had planned to go further to New Pass. We loaded the dinghy up will all the “essentials” needed to hit the beach: skim board and wet suit (for Corey), large bucket, cast net, fishing pole, 2 small coolers, large dry bag full of extra clothes/towels, backpack with all my camera gear, 2 adults, 1 child and 1 wiener dog.  No wonder we couldn’t get on plane.

We recently purchased a new carburetor to turn our 8hp Nissan dinghy motor into a 10hp motor. It works great for getting the 3 of us and the dog up on plane but we weren’t sure whether it would get on plane with it loaded down with gear.. Sunday was that test and we failed. We tried everything. We all leaned forward and tried to catch waves from boats passing by, we tried to run with the current and the wind. It wasn’t going to happen. We need a bigger motor. So, we decided we were hell bent on getting to New Pass anyway. It would be a long ride unless we could gain some speed. Randy and Corey decided to run the motor harder for a while to make up some time. Unfortunately, this caused us to spin a prop. Since we didn’t have a spare dinghy prop we decided to head over to Big Carlos Pass and enjoy the day knowing it would be a very slow ride home.

Since the Fort Myers Beach side  of the pass is quite steep and very rocky/shelly, we decided to pull ashore on the Lovers Key side. We weren’t real happy about this because they have strict rules about not having pets on the beach or alcohol. Not pets? No beer? What else is there to do? Since we had Sophie with us, we had to keep her on the down-low. We put her on a towel behind the cooler between our chairs. If patrol came past us, we would just cover her up. She was a perfect angel and never barked or caused any trouble. We only stayed about 1 and a half hour since we were worried about making it back. As we were leaving, we ran into Rick and Deb from What’s Next who are staying in our marina. They were just out for a dinghy ride as well and we told them about New Pass and to check it out. Our ride home was slow but it didn’t matter on such a gorgeous Fla. winter day.

Once we made it home, Corey went to his mom’s house and Randy and I hopped on our bikes and headed down the beach. We had a rumrunner at Lani Kai and watched the spring breakers and then headed to the Beach Pub for a beer and sunset. It was a perfect ending for a weekend that went by way too fast.