Florida’s West Coast

At Clearwater Beach, our last evening.  Same photo
we took 3 years ago!

So, we got out of Clearwater Tuesday as planned into a very humid, windy day.  We went “on the outside” in the Gulf, rather than staying “inside” on the ICW, so we could make more miles.  Even so, the winds were SW 15-20, so we had whitecaps, 2-3’ waves, and a very bouncy uncomfortable ride.

On Pier 60 at Clearwater Beach.
Our granddaughter loves dolphins.

Off of St Pete Beach, the tourists will go out in any weather

We crossed Tampa Bay via a narrow, shallow (6’) cut NE of Egmont Key, instead of having to go west about 3 more miles to follow the main ship channel.  We tend to pick our way through places like this, rather than setting waypoints on our chartplotter.  On the south side of the Bay, we re-entered the ICW near Anna Maria Island, and got out of the wind & waves.  We had scouted out several anchorages for this week, rather than spending the money to stay in marinas, and we made our first one early afternoon just to the west of Sarasota.

At our anchorage, mansions on one side (with the
cheesy tourist boat)

We anchored between two keys that were as different as could be.  On the one side was Otter Key, a mass of mangroves uninhabited by humans, but teeming with wildlife.  About 300 yards on our other side were mansions after mansions with a starting price of $1.5 mil and no apparent upper limit.  And right through the middle of our cove came a hokey tourist boat with chatter over the loud speaker.  The locals must really love it.

Our anchorage next to the mangroves & pelicans & egrets

The T-storms associated with the cold front gave us 30-40 mph winds but we stayed in place.  Our new anchor bridle (with 35’ of 1” nylon – way overkill for our size boat) is giving us much more confidence that we won’t be dragging anchor anytime soon.  The typical high pressure system behind the cold front gave us north winds but quite dry.  For the next couple nights at anchor, we could open our windows at night & turn off the air conditioners; something not normally done in May in Florida.

Along the ICW south of Venice, with his $1 million Hinckley
sailboat docked out front

I wonder if the liberals think this guy has more than
his "fair share"?!!  Maybe he could let a dozen other families
move in with him!  Just think what a true socialist like Bernie could do!!

Two possible captions:
"we have plenty of water depth!!", or
"this is the USA if Bernie gets elected"

The weather for the rest of the week was absolutely gorgeous.  Basically north winds 15 mph, but cool & dry.  Because we stayed on the “inside” route, we didn’t get the 5’ waves that the Gulf was seeing.  On Friday, we anchored again in one of our favorite spots – Pelican Bay next to Cayo Costa Island.  We had spent a couple nights here 3 years ago & loved it.  We’re gonna try out best to handle 3 more nights of it.  We’ll finally get our new dinghy ready to go & mount our outboard motor, which we bought a year ago & never used yet.  We hope to go ashore to the state park & finally get off the boat, after 4 days.  If everything works right, we’ll try to go to Cabbage Key to the quirky restaurant, where, the rumor goes, Jimmy Buffet wrote “Cheeseburgers in Paradise”.  Yeah, I know, this relaxing on our boat in beautiful anchorages sure takes a lot of work, but somebody had to do it!