A Beautiful Day on the Intracoastal Waterway

Today did not start like I thought it would...Surprise! The  windlass motor was not working well...so the Captain decided to save it to help him when pulling up if the anchor got hard. THEN he tells me I will run the boat while he hauls the anchor up! WHAT?!  I didn't like this idea at all...taking the wheel now and then to give him a break while we are underway is not so bad but to put the engines in gear, forward and reverse to slack the chain so he could pull it up.....no thank you!....but in the end I didn't really want to give him back the helm!...yeah, I had fun! 

So we put on the headsets.....this is so no one living on the ICW will hear it if we have a little disagreement!   

Captain using his back.

First mate using...?????

When finally in the ICW we had a 20 knot wind and the current against us most of the day.  Here you can see the white caps on the water.

    But it was a warm wonderful day.

Being Saturday many boats were on the water with us... and it is true about the west coast of Florida....no matter what size the vessels are, none slow down when passing another boat so we were rocked often.

Some rowers were practicing.

A Sailing school near an inlet to the Gulf.

All the bridges in the Venice, FL area were alike...with towers for the bridge tenders that had roofs that matched the nearby condos. The winter sun, low in the sky, kept me from getting good photos of these structures.

There was always a peanut gallery of birds, sea gulls, ducks, pelicans and cormorants welcoming us through a bridge.

   You can see the “story” on this bridge below them...it is 9 feet so it had to open for us.

Sometimes we lowered the mast but for the next bridge it was up making us 25 feet high!  I was sure we would loose it and all the electronics on it!!  I was on the bow when I saw the “story” saying 20 feet and since the Captain didn't seem bothered by my panic on deck I snapped this photo just before the sign was out of sight.  I wanted proof why I had tried to warn him.

Then the miracle happened...we barely made it under the bridge.... you can't see it but on top of the round Garmin radar on the mast showing just behind the isinglass enclosure of the helm is the VHF radio antenna. I was sure it was bending but no damage was done. Amazing!

This last bridge of the day was a swing bridge.

   On weekends this bridge opened every 15 minutes so we didn't need to wait long.

  Lots of lovely homes along the waterway today.  I liked the light yellow with the white trim on this one.  

Here is a house with a Bimini top (rolled up) above the chairs they put on their roof. A quick fix for an observation tower.

From this tower you can see both the Gulf Beaches and the ICW depending on which way you look.

We began to see the pretty Royal Palm trees with the smooth green area at the top....they do not grow much further north than this.

Here is a close up.

This is a clever way to do a ferry...it is a barge with a little tug boat.

Our destination today was Pelican Bay at Cayo Costa. A place I had read about before we left on this Adventure, pretty place I wanted to see. However, I had also read that it took “local knowledge” to get into it because of much shoaling....shallow places. But we did as instructed on the website, Active Captain. Turned out the water was deeper than what the chart told us.

Anchoring was the same pain... Walter letting the chain down by hand. 

 This was a popular anchorage. In this picture you can not see the three boats rafted (attached) together behind the far boat...there were 6 other boats on our starboard side and many others across near the beach.

We took the dinghy in to the dock and then walked a mile on this interesting sandy path to the beach.

The beach was not as pretty as Caledesi Island as the sand was not as white but again it was a nearly deserted beach.

 We walked most of it then walked back to the dinghy to be on Miss gg for dinner.

There is a soft rain falling now and we can hear a bit of thunder, too.  Good night from our little Ark!