About every three or four miles you come upon a draw bridge (marked "bascule" on the chart, just like the Market Street Bridge in Chattanooga). At first it is fun to call the bridge tenders and arrange the openings, but after about six it gets routine.
Many of the bridges are opened "on demand," but some are on schedules and you never know until you get there. In another interesting twist, some of the bridges have been renamed since the charts were printed and the bridge tenders don't answer to the old name. It seems to be kind of a game they play.
Tuesday afternoon, we pulled into Marina Jack in downtown Sarasota. We got a warm welcome and the surrounding scenery was incredible. I think it is the most beautiful marina I have ever stayed in.
When we went to the showers, we were totally sold. It was tile, granite and glass with individual chambers that felt like home. We even had a newspaper on our deck in the morning when we awoke.
We left all that luxury on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. We headed south down the ICW, calling bridges on the VHF radio and enjoying the waterfowl, the boats, and the mansions. Bob even whipped up some biscuits and gravy as we poked southward in the morning sun.
About mid-day, we passed the Venice Pass out into the Gulf. I asked Bob if he wanted to venture out into the big water and he said, "Hell yes!". The big water looked like Lake Chickamauga when we got there. We turned south and I set up the electronics to take us to Boca Grande Pass. I was a little concerned that we might not have enough daylight to get there at our present speed, but those fears were soon assuaged by the building wind. Of course, that also caused the seas to lump up. Before long we were booming downwind at 6.5 knots in a three-foot following sea.
Bob cooked some shrimp with rice for lunch on the gimballed stove (for non boaters, a gimbaled stove is mounted in such a way that it stays level when the boat is "heeled.") For a while we set the spinnaker, but the wind soon grew to strong for the light nylon and we rolled the genoa back out. By the time we had covered the 25 miles to the Boca Grande entrance buoy, the wind was gusting to 18 kts and the seas were pushing us rapidly toward Key West.
When we turned at the entrance buoy, all that wind was coming across our beam and Bob got to experience the "humming keel" as we screamed toward the lighthouse at Boca Grande. An hour later we were safely back in the ICW and I headed toward Pelican Bay, where I had anchored many times in charter boats over the years. There is no feeling like familiar waters.
By 5:00 p.m. we were anchored and cocktails were made to celebrate another beautiful day in the Gulf.
I played taps on my bugle as the sun went down. I know it's queer, but I like it and I think Bob did too, even though he tried to hide it.
I did some tide and weather research to make sure we wouldn't be in the mud tomorrow and called our next marina to see if they had space for us. It looks like another cold front from the mainland is going to stir things up for a few days so were are working on plans that avoid those risks.
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