Thanks!

GREAT trip report! Well, except the part about grab-assing a sea urchin. Yeeouch! Hope you're healing up well. But when I read the part about you swimming after dark, all I can say is you were lucky. After dark is feeding time in our ocean, and there are some big toothy mouths out there. I've done it too, but I don't recommend it.

Ah, a Travis McGee fan. As a former Floridian from the Sun Coast I love everything by John D. MacDonald. Spent many years in the Sarasota area and he was right on in his descriptions of places, even if he changed their names. One of my favorite passages of his that I identify with:
"There was beginning to be such a subtle additive of light that I could make out the ghostly shape of a marker off to my left, where North Pass entered Timber Bay, and beyond it some shadowy tree shapes on the outcroppings that sheltered the bay. The Gulf was quiet, with a gentle lap and slap of small waves on the packed wet sand. I heard a deep-throated diesel chugging through the wet noises of the sea and soon saw the outline of a shrimper heading out. There was a pale yellow rectangle in the amidships area, with a man standing against the glow, and I saw him lift his arm and realized that he was lifting a cup of coffee to his lips. It was so vivid I could smell the coffee."
John D. MacDonald, "The Empty Copper Sea" (1978)

Yeah, that's the ticket...