We took Rambler II down from Port 32 Naples to Snook Inn on Marco Island for lunch, then a short stop at Tigertail Beach for a dunk in the Gulf of Mexico and a run back north to Naples through the Gulf. It was a GREAT day on the water.
Come with us for a day on the water.
June 5th, 2026
We took Rambler II down from Port 32 Naples to the Keywaydin Island sandbar for a few hours.
Our oldest son John Bailey Needham graduated from Virginia Tech this year, and as most readers already know, he was a four-year member of the VT marching band, The Marching Virginians. He was also in the VT Pep Band so he got to play for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, and even got to travel with the women’s team as they marched through the NCAA tournament, to the final four. He played for the crowd at games at VT, and in Seattle for the Elite Eight, and then traveled to Houston for the Final Four, where VT lost in their final Four game.
While watching some VT football games this year, we saw the commercial below, and wouldn’t you know? The commercial featured the marching band playing, AND included a brief clip of the marching band, featuring our son on trumpet. You can see that at the 25-second mark in the video below.
So I’m preserving this video in hopes that it will always be available and maybe, in the future, our son’s cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, maybe even his own kids, will be able to see it too.
Sunsets. We get some nice ones here in Southwest Florida.
Yesterday Carolyn and Cody and I went out into the Gulf of Mexico for a first-ever sunset cruise on Rambler II. Carolyn and I tried to do the same thing Saturday but the conditions in the Gulf were not conducive to a comfortable sunset cruise.
The conditions in the Gulf on Monday were much better. We dropped an anchor in shallow water, knowing that the tide was coming while we were on the beach. We had some cocktails and waited for sunset.
We took Mabel The Rescue too, who has proven to be a first rate Boat Dog and adequate crew member.
So, here is what we experienced yesterday evening.
John P. Needham
November 21, 2023
Naples, FL
Carolyn and I are now the parents of two college graduates. Last Thursday Cody Ambrose Needham graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and an Associates degree in Culinary Arts.
Cody showed an interest in cooking long before he started planning for college, when he was very young. He always said that he wanted to go to “cooking school” rather than college. When he got serious about college, we told him to find a school with a bachelors program, and we’d agree. He came up with CIA and we were on board.
CIA has a program called Journey for Juniors, for high-schools students to get a feel for what life would be on campus, and I took Cody up for that between his junior and senior years of HS. That sealed the deal. Cody never even looked at another college.
So after three years as full-time student, one semester spent in an award-winning kitchen at The Herbfarm Restaurant in Woodinville WA, and one semester spent in Barcelona studying the cuisine of the Mediterranean, Cody now joins his brother John Bailey as a degreed professional.
Cody will be returning to Naples, FL where he will join the team of Chef Todd Johnson later this month at Nosh at Naples Bay.
We can't wait for Cody to join us back in Naples.
John P. Needham
August 7, 2023, 630AM
Naples, FL
Yesterday John Bailey Needham graduated with his classmates from the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and the Environment with a degree in meteorology.
Today he graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
It probably goes without saying that we are all profoundly proud of this young man.
He accomplished so much:
Four years in The Marching Virginians.
Four years in Pep Band which included a 2023 trip to the NCAA Final Four with the VT Women's team this year.
He started as a major in computer modeling and data analytics (CMDA) but early on developed an affinity for, a love of, meteorology; he asked us for permission to change his major, which we cheerfully gave. (VT has the top meteorology program in the U.S. according to US News.)
He is still searching for a job but we are confident that he will land something interesting soon. The field really is wide open and he's a talented and motivated young man.
We could not be happier for Bailey and we look forward to seeing what he achieves in coming years, and decades.
There are banners hanging around the VT campus that read “This Is Home.” I think, for John Bailey, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg will always hold a special place in his heart. He is now a Virginia Tech alumni. But he will always be a Hokie.
John P. Needham
May 12, 2023
Blacksburg, VA
When I was growing up in Chicago, my ol' man had a gorgeous 28 foot Pearson sloop in Lake Michigan. It was named Rambler. The name came from the Loyola Academy High School Ramblers, where one of my brothers played football and ran track, and where me and another brother ran cross country and track.
He had that boat for only a few years. I loved sailing it, learning about sailing, learning nautical terms, learning nautical knots, things like that.
When we moved to Naples, FL Carolyn and I thought about getting a boat. I even casually shopped online for local sailboats. Found a few. But I knew that getting a sail boat probably wasn't the best idea. Taking a sailboat even on just a day sail is a large undertaking. Especially here in Naples, with bridges, shallow water, and crazy winds.
Besides, “sailing” isn't really what Carolyn and I like to do on boats. Our preferences lean more towards driving to beaches, sandbars and local waterfront restaurants. None of those would be options in a typical sailboat.
So, we joined Freedom Boat Club instead. That gave us a chance to use power boats: center consoles, bowriders, deck boats, and pontoons.
We became moderately competent novice boaters. We did the things we enjoyed. I took the Coast Guard Safe Boating class up in Fort Meyers, and Carolyn is going to do the same thing.
But Freedom Boat Club was also a little limiting. We had to have the boats back to the dock before sunset, so sunset cruises were out of the question. And in high season here in SW Florida, it was very difficult to get a boat on weekends.
So after a year of boating at Freedom Boat Club, Carolyn and I took the plunge and got a boat of our own.
We christened her Rambler II.
John P. Needham
February 28, 2023
Bayshore Drive
Naples, FL
On this ultra-lazy Monday after Christmas, after a family visit with the Matriarch of the Hardy Clan, after a weekend of cooking with family, hanging with extended family, boating with the Minkers and the Dwyers, little enough was accomplished.
It was glorious.
John P. Needham
December 26, 2022
Naples, FL
We went next door to the Naples Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show last night. It is a pretty spectacular show and we are really happy that the botanical garden is right next to our house, across the street.
This has become an annual tradition here in Naples, FL.
John P. Needham
December 23, 2022
Naples, FL
Thanks to Amazon Photos. Pretty cool.
https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/OCaRcCa4TG2r90h2HLsJww.tkgSMbtXPKPsRXUnKd4QsV
Cody Needham has been studying The Cuisine of the Mediterranean this semester, so Carolyn and I decided to make a trip to visit him. Neither of us had been to Barcelona, and with Cody there, it seemed like a good time to go.
We flew from Miami on October 20th, arriving in Barcelona on the 21st, and returned on October 28th.
It was a fabulous trip. Barcelona is truly a magical city. The Catalan people are wonderful. We had no idea what we were doing when we booked out hotel, except that it was, according to Google Maps, it was walking distance from Cody's residence.
But it was also in a terrific neighborhood. It had a rooftop bar when the a view of the Mediterranean. It was walking distance from one tourist-y site after another. The Museu Picasso. The Museu de la Xocolata, where the museum tickets are small bars of chocolate. The Museum of of Contemporary Art. Palau Guëll. We also saw La Sagrada Familia, the Basilica of the Sacred Family. We visited Park Guëll.
The food was great. The Iberico ham was the best ham I've ever had. We had cocktails and dinner at Paradiso, which Bloomberg News called “the best bar in the world” and was a short walk from our hotel. We had our 25th anniversary dinner at El Nacional and followed that up the next night with dinner at Michelin starred Restaurant Xavier Pellicer, at Cody's strong recommendation.
I posted tons of pictures over on the IG but here are some new ones and some repeats.
John P. Needham
November 3, 2022
Naples, FL
I am re-sharing this YouTube video of John Bailey from five years ago for no reason except that I was reminded of it this morning. (Someone commented on the video, but I removed the comment.) Our son John and his friends formed the first ever mariachi band in their high-school’s history, with no sponsorship or, really, and administrative help at all from the school.
Then the entered the school’s local mariachi band competition and qualified for the Texas State UIL Mariachi Festival in UT-Rio Grande Valley in Edinburgh, TX. They were the first mariachi ensemble to qualify for that state festival in the history of the Klein Independent School District.
This video is, I think, from their very first ever live performance, in the Klein Oak High School auditorium.
John P. Needham
October 15, 2022
Naples, FL
On September 28th, hurricane Ian blew through the southwest Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ian followed the path of a devastating storm in 2004, hurricane Charlie. There were two big differences between Ian and Charlie:
Charlie came past Naples heading north and made landfall around Punta Gorda, and the storm last around five hours; in contrast, Ian passed Naples and also made landfall around Punta Gorda, but it lasted for roughly 12 hours. Ian was offshore of Naples from low tide all the way through high tide, which dramatically increased the size of the storm surge.
Ian also was a monster-sized storm: the entire wind field from Charlie would have fit into just the eye of hurricane Ian. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, the eye of Ian was just off the coast of Naples, but the wind field extended all the way from Key West to Sarasota.
We lost power at 10:15AM Wednesday and it did not come back until overnight on Friday. Of course, all the cell towers in SWFL also were blown down so we had extremely limited cellular service too. We still don't have good drinking water a week later.
Below are some images I took during and after the storm. Just posting them for posterity's sake.
John P. Needham
October 4th, 2022
5:25PM
Naples, FL
This young man is off on a wonderful adventure. He will spend the next three months in and around Barcelona, studying the cuisine of the Mediterranean in his concentration semester with the Culinary Institute of America.
Boat day. We spent the day on the Keywaydin Island sandbar with Cody and his girlfriend Sophi who is visiting from upstate NY. We anchored around noon, low tide was at 12:39, and when the tide turned tons of dolphins came out and started feeding at the sandbar. We saw more than a dozen of them. It was very, very cool. Mabel was nonplussed by these swimming dogs with fins.
#BoatLife
#BoatDog
#MabelTheRescue
We had a 21-foot bowrider today, with a 150HP engine, called Hysteria.
We picked it up at Freedom Boat Club (Brookside), stayed on the inside south of Naples Bay, anchored at the sandbar at Keywaydin Island, and coaxed Mabel into the water a few times. Then she peed on the backseat on the way back. 🤷
Carolyn and I had dinner at The Bevy in downtown Naples last night, with nephew Joey Howard and his girlfriend Olivia, who were in town on vacation, staying with Olivia's parents who have a home near us here in East Naples.
It was a really nice dinner and a wonderful catch-up with Joey. He is a fine young man with a great job in San Diego.
