Schooner Appledore V

Our friends Bill and Leslie bought an afternoon cruise on the Schooner Appledore V in Fort Myers through Groupon and didn't get a chance to use it. So they gave us the coupon. When I called the Appledore to make a reservation, they said they weren't doing the two hour cruise the coupon was good for, but we could use it for the three hour "Go Fish Family Cruise."

We were supposed to be at the dock at Salty Sam's Marina fifteen minutes early, but I messed up when I put the address into the GPS... I gave them a call and they waited for us -- we ended up only about five minutes late --

Fortunately when they had sent a confirmation email, they mentioned they left from Dock A, so we were able to go right there --

And there is was, and they were waiting for us --

The schooner had a crew of three who tended to the sails --

They referred to the Appledores (there are five of them) as traditional sailing schooners --

The sails are gaff-rigged. That is they have a wooden boom at the bottom and a wooden gaff at the top of the sail, making the sail a big rectangle.

Part of the uniqueness of their "Go Fish" cruise is dropping a trawl net overboard weighted to skim the bottom of  San Carlos Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. They left it down for fifteen minutes or so.

Then they hauled it in and dumped the contents into some plastic tubs --

This was the first time they had caught a ray --

They very quickly took a look at it and then dumped it back over the side (there are regs about what they can keep on board for a bit.) --

We were able to take a good look at the other critters that the net had brought up. This interesting bottom feeder is called a bat fish --

This is its under-side. It uses those orangey pectoral fins to help propel it across the bottom sand --

This one was called a Lizard Fish. That mouth is something else again!

I think this was the cutest of the critters the net brought up. It's a Spider crab.

There were three anemones in the net as well --

We thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon on the water. We ended up stopping at Big Game Waterfront Grill for a delicious shrimp dinner on the way home.