Treasure Island to Charlotte Harbor

A bit of overkill???

WE departed, somewhat reluctantly, the Treasure Island Marina at around 9:30 on Sunday, the 23rd and motored south in the direction of Tampa and ultimately, Sarasota. Why the late start?? Well, these old fogies danced our legs off at the yacht club until about mid-night, Saturday night. We went there for dinner (New England lobster for $23 for me and crab cakes for Di--fabulous) and did not anticipate the excellent band that would be playing during and after dinner. It was a 2 man band--two very talented black guys who specialized in blues, R & B, and some rock. They were great. The lead guy played keyboard with his right hand and synthesizer with his left--horns, strings etc. The other guy played drums. The lead guy had an incredible voice. There were just a few people in the bar/dining room and no-one seemed to be paying atention to the band until we started clapping for each song. Finally others joined in to show appreciation. We decided to stick around and have an after dinner drink. We ended up meeting several people on boats at the marina, some members, some not--but really struck up a friendly dialog with the bartender, Joe. ( What is it with us and Joe's???) Pretty soon we couldn't sit still and were dancing. It didn't take long for the rest of the bar to join us. Some people even got up from their dining table to join in. The band quit all too soon and it wasn't 'till then that we realized how late it was. What a night---great food, great service, great company and conversation and outstanding music.

BUT--we had to leave and get going south. We're still reaching for the tropics. (My friend Dave Koplin writes that he judges whether he's in the tropics by whether or not there are coconuts and mango trees. By that standard we're not quite there yet)

The motor down the ditch to Sarasota was uneventful except for the constant view of the most gorgeous homes you've ever seen--one after the other, hundreds of them lining the beach on our starboard. We're talking minimum 10,000 square feet--back yard to a bay or the waterway, front yard to the Gulf of Mexico. Where did so many people get so much money??? I wonder if they are enjoying their life on the same relativity scale as I--if so, I can't imagine such joie de vivre. We all know that such incredible wealth does not automatically bring with it the kind of happiness we all seek --but I sure wouldn't mind putting it to the test.

WE had a nice motor sail across Tampa Bay, constantly in sight of the Skyway Bridge, back into the ditch on the south end and more mansions and some more modest but very nice dwellings on the waterway and finally a lovely sail across Sarasota Bay to our marina--Marina Jack-- right in the downtown area. We had the beautiful skyline of Sarasota in view all the way across the bay. We wished we could have spent more time exploring Sarasota from the marina but we needed to move along.

The other remarkable aspect of this part of the GIWW is the bridges. Oh yes, the bridges. Every where else they open on request. Here they open on a schedule. Usually on the hour and every 20 minutes thereafter. The problem was as I was pulling the dinghy we were slowed a bit by the drag that it put on the boat plus we seemed to constantly have a strong current working against us and these factors slowed us down enough that we had trouble making a 20 minute schedule between bridges. They all seemed to be just out of reach , so we would arrive at the next bridge about 5 minutes or 10 minutes after its last opening and have to sit there and circle for 10 or 15 minutes. Not all of them, but enough that it got old after a while. AND--there are a lot of bridges. I estimate that over the last 2 days we have gone under 15 bridges?? It got a bit better south of Sarasota--the last several bridges (in less dense traffic areas) opened on request. You can imagine with all these heavily populated barrier islands that they need the bridges to get everyone back and forth--and they certainly could not spend the kind of money it would require to build them all at the 63 foot height that we had been used to in Texas, Louisiana and Miss.

Again, the next day was more of the same until we arrived at our current stopover--Cape Haze Marina in Engelwood, near Stump Pass. A nice little, out-of-the-way marina just short of the mouth to Charlotte Harbor. With another bout of very bad weather on its way--very high winds and thunderstorms--we decided to park here while we rent a car and drive over to join our friends, Ed and Teresa Dormer in West Palm Beach--they're from Kingwood but vacationing in WPB for the week. I haven't seen our good friends, with whom we are somewhat inseparable, since the end of November. I am really looking forward to the reunion. When we return to the boat we'll move on to explore Charlotte Harbor.

OK---the explanation of the dinghy on the forklift--- We tied up where instructed at the Cape Haze Marina but the problem is the laundry, bath and office facilities are a pretty long walk over to the other side of the harbor--so we decided to dinghy over and transport our considerable laundry that way. When I got into the dinghy it lowered the stern enough that the little drain hole in the transom--the self bailing device --was now under water and a considerable amount of water was leaking in despite my attempts to close it tight. When we got over to the other side of the harbor we were met and assisted with our stuff by a couple of the guys that work here and run the dry stack operation (thus the fork lift---this thing is used to lifting up to 12 tons of boats and depositing them in the water or on the racks where they are stored. I started to manually lift the dink onto the dock and one of the guys offered to ease my strain by lifting it with the forklift. He did and we found and fixed the problem. But I thought you might get a kick out of seeing my 100 lb dinghy on this lift---I did.

From there we walked about a mile to a delicious breakfast and back to continue laundry and boat cleaning operations in anticipation of leaving the boat for a couple of days---what better way to spend a bad weather day??

Now I will announce another major change in plans---We are so enjoying the previously undiscovered west coast of Florida that we have decided to stay here for several weeks and explore Charlotte Harbor, Captiva, Marco Island and other islands, plus some off-shore sailing. So We're going to negotiate a long term rate at one of the Charlotte Harbor marinas, probably the Burnt Store Marina because of it's very short and easy access to the islands and the pass leading out to the Gulf, and enjoy exploring this part of the world. It was Diane's idea and I didn't have to think too long on it. We are considering leaving the boat in this area when we have completed this journey and this will be an excellent opportunity to explore and see if it is everything we want. We know it's relatively easy to get to--a 1 1/2 hour flight and a rent-a-car away-- and fairly affordable--both transportation and boat storage. We'll give it a go and see how we like it. This also alows the weather to settle a bit more before we head south and over to the islands, but still gives us plenty of time to do what we want to do in the Bahamas.

The future blogs may not be quite as interesting (They are aren't they?) but we'll try to keep up and describe our discoveries as we explore this part of Fla. Life is good!!!