It all started because I love sailing and my wife and I wanted to get our 34' Catalina sailboat "Joie de Vie" to the Florida Keys for the winter. Now I have a full time and then some job as the owner of a sign business in Raleigh, North Carolina and time off is a rare commodity. We came up with a whacked out (in retrospect) plan to deliver the boat to the keys in a leg-by-leg journey on weekends. Now you know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and we had plenty of good intentions.

The first weekend leg took us from Beaufort, North Carolina to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina where we left the boat and found someone who would drive us back to our car in Beaufort, and then we drove the 3 hours back to Raleigh. The next weekend we drove to Wrightsville Beach and made the next two day leg of the journey to Little River, South Carolina where we left the boat in a marina and hired a driver ($100) to take us back to Wrightsville Beach, and then a drive back to home and work the next day. The third weekend found us driving 4 hours to Little River, SC where our bicycles had been stolen off the boat, and then a two day trip down the intercoastal waterway to Charleston, SC. As we were making the turn into Charleston Harbor my wife fouled the head sail in a strong wind and it proceeded to shred in a matter of a minute. There went a couple of thousand dollars more. So we anchor the boat, take the dingy ashore, hire a driver to take us back to Little River, SC ( another $150) and make the 4 hour drive back home in time for another work week. Now don't get me wrong, I loved the travel and sailing part of the trip but face it, this thing's getting expensive and time consuming and dare I say exhausting.

Skip ahead a couple of weekends, and we're tired, the boat is now in Brunswick, Georgia and we decide that the plan may have been a bit ambitious. We make arrangements to winter the boat in Brunswick and wearily trek back home. Fall turned into winter and it was an especially cold winter that year. One cold cold Friday we decided to drive the five and a half hours down to Brunswick and spend the weekend on the boat....it's got to be warmer there, after all its almost Florida.....right?

As we stuck our heads out the hatch Saturday morning we found a cold rain falling. This is not exactly what we had in mind!! My wife looked at me and asked, "you want to drive south and see if we can find some sunshine?". OK...I'm up for that, and off we went. Only about 40 miles to Florida....still raining! Heading west across Florida now on Hwy. 10 over to the west coast, and still raining. Somehow I had it in my head that Florida was a warm sunny place in the winter. Now we head south and get as far as Tampa when we finally ditch the rain and wow...check this out, its 72 degrees outside in the middle of February. Man I could get used to this.

We spent the weekend in the Tampa area and drove just a bit farther south to Anna Maria Island where we found the Sandbar Restaurant http://www.sandbar-restaurant.com at the north end of the island. We requested a table by the beach where we were able to take off our shoes and wiggle our toes in the sand. It was 80 degrees and sunny and there we sat drinking Pina Coladas and eating the local delicacy, stone crab claws. Now my friends it just doesn't get any better than that. It was then and there that we fell in love with this area. The Sandbar Restaurant is owned by the Chiles Group, and they have 2 other great restaurants in the area.  The Beach House restaurant in Holmes beach, and Mar Vista Restaurant, which is a few hundred yards from my home.  Mar Vista is easily accessible by land or by boat.  It's located just off the Intercoastal Waterway at the north end of Longboat Key.  Our trip by boat to Brunswick, Georgia $$mega bucks, finding Paradise.....Priceless.

Come back and I'll tell you the story of how we found our island home and about life on a Florida island that has only four homes and no bridge connecting it to land. Click this link for the next chapter of the story. http://hubpages.com/hub/Paradise-Found-Jewfish-Key Dont forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page for more pictures. And here's the link to the currently final chapter of this adventure. www.hubpages.com/hub/Burried-Treasure-and-Robinson-Caruso