As you might have heard from our last post about our recent repairs on Blue Turtle, we are finally cruising again! And what better way to test the steering and engine repairs made by Randy than cruising to Keewadin Island?

Keewaydin Island is typically on our cruise-to list whenever we have more than a weekend to get off the dock. Since it typically takes 5-6 hours to get there, we usually reserve trips there to Christmas break or spring break since that’s when Corey gets the most days off from school.

It works out great for us to go there with Corey since his wake board coach and mentor lives in Naples and often takes his boat near Keewaydin. Many times, Nick will cruise up to Blue Turtle and Corey hops over to go wake boarding for the day.

This year, we did have a cold front come through bringing some high winds and cooler temps. Actually the day we headed out from New Pass to Keewaydin, it was raining the entire day. Randy steered the boat from the lower helm since it was so wet and dismal outside. The seas were perfectly calm, but it just rained non-stop. We decided to try a different route to Keewaydin than the normal way of Gordon Pass. This time we went further south and into Capri Pass. It took about a half hour longer but there wasn’t as much boat traffic. Gordon Pass is sometimes unbearable with so many day boats (some of them really large) speeding past us and waking us left and right. We decided to try this as an alternate route. While there wasn’t much boat traffic to begin with on a rainy day, it still proved pretty calm when we left out of there later in the week.

Even with the cold snap, we still made it to beach a couple of times for a mid-day beach run and a few late afternoons for happy hour. Corey didn’t get to get out on the wake boat as often as we would have liked but the trip was still just what this crew needed — time off the dock to unwind.