From Cape Coral to the Ten Thousand Islands

Two numbers, because we run from two marinas. Our slip at Naples Bay Resort & Marina, 1500 5th Avenue South, is roughly 45 to 65 minutes from most Cape addresses. San Marco Marina at 604 E Palm Avenue in Goodland, which is where the shelling and island trips depart, is roughly 1 hour 20 to 1 hour 45 — Goodland lies past Naples on the far southeast tip of Marco Island, and that tail is what catches people out. Season, roughly November through April, stretches both. Treat them as ranges rather than promises and check the marina address in your own map app the morning you travel.

Boats out of the Cape do it every year and it is a genuinely good trip, so here is the trade rather than a sales pitch. Once you are clear of the bay there is no continuous protected route the rest of the way, which means committing to open water on the way down and again on the way back — and the second call gets made late, when everyone aboard is already cooked. You also arrive at the good part with the running already spent. Riding it once is a cheaper way to learn that leg before you plan it around your own hull.

You can, and for a second or third visit it makes sense. It does not shorten the day, though; it lengthens both ends with hitching, launching, retrieving and flushing, and the drive itself is unchanged. Some launch points in this corner go thin at the bottom of the tide, so the ramp becomes one more thing the tide decides for you. The subtler trade is that you spend the day watching the water for hazards instead of watching it for what is in it.

Depth, marking, and the fact that it moves. The Ten Thousand Islands are a maze of mangrove keys on a shallow shelf full of shoals and oyster bars, and the cuts worth using are thinly marked or unmarked entirely. Charts lag reality because storm seasons rebuild the bottom — 2022 rearranged a great deal of it and it has kept shifting since. Add a real tide range and water you crossed on the way in becomes a flat you would rather not be on going out. It is beautiful water. It is not forgiving water, and it does not reward guessing.

If you have never been out there, take a shelling trip from Goodland. That dock is the head start into the islands, and it puts you on the one thing a Cape canal cannot reach in a morning. It runs year-round, starting at $125 per adult and $90 per child, with winter bringing morning negative lows and summer bringing evening ones. Book it before you plan the drive rather than after: the departure hour is set by the tide, not by what suits your schedule. Empty shells only, and Florida’s state shell is the horse conch.

Yes, and we would rather say so than oversell a drive. Our Fort Myers page covers what runs nearer the river, and if the goal is a pleasant couple of hours afloat, that is a much shorter day than this one. Come south when you specifically want the islands — shell beaches nobody rakes and nobody drives to, backcountry that looks nothing like a canal, and wildlife working its own schedule, which is why we never promise a sighting. That is the entire argument for the car.