Day 215- SARASOTA!!! We’re HOME!

Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Temp: 86/65, Humidity: 43/88%, Top Wind: E14 mph, Precip: breezy & sunny, Miles Traveled: 38

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It was a breezy day, but we’re headed home, so let’s go! We left Gulfport at about 9:00am. What a nice marina and town. We’ll have to drive back up here sometime and scope it out some more.

One of the causeways over to St Petersburg Beach looked really cool as we went under.

As we followed the ICW around and got nearer to the Sunshine Bridge, we could see lots of wind surfers on the windward side of that causeway. This is a great day for it! We were on the leeward side, so we didn’t have much rough water – yet – but that was about to change.

As we got out into the Tampa Bay channel, we had some rockin and rollin coming from the east. Fortunately, we needed to turn and go southwest, so the waves were on our port stern corner. It made it a little squirrelly to drive, but the ride wasn’t bad at all once we turned. Hello Sunshine Bridge! It’s so good to see you!!

This photo shows the waves a little better. They were white cappy and choppy. Ordinarily I would not choose to be out on this water, but it was kind of funny. I remember thinking that after all of the different water conditions and large expanses of open water that we’ve been on in the last seven months, this seemed like no big deal. HA! How perceptions and tolerances change! Well – especially when “home” is on the end of the voyage! And I knew this was a short piece of water that we just needed to get across, and it wasn’t going to get crazy on us.

Once we tucked in behind Anna-Maria Island and were back in the ICW, the water was much calmer and it was a nice scenic boat ride in familiar waters. Look at all these colors! The water was surprisingly clear, which we cannot always say for this area.

This was a fun looking floating party island. There was a phone number to call, so it must be available for rent.

YAHOO! It’s the Ringling Causeway out to Lido Key! This is downtown Sarasota! I could hardly keep from dancing! I was so excited to be in our home town!

We radioed in to Marina Jack’s to get our slip assignment, and checked the marina map online to see where we were going. Oooh – on the dock with the really big girls on the right!! We had two nice helpful dockhands come out to help us in, and Captain backed us into the slip like a boss. I do love our headsets!! It’s nice to come in to a big fancy marina and actually look like you know what you’re doing. (We should, right? After docking in over 100 different marinas in the last seven months?!)

We got all settled in and I figured we should have some lunch, since we hadn’t eaten anything yet today. But first… Break out the Little Beers! It’s celebration time!!!

Here was our journey today. We are now where the red rectangle is. We started the loop where the pink arrow is pointing. That was our home dock, which we cannot go back to because it is not available. So….we have not technically crossed our wake yet. We WILL, next week when we take Island Girl south to Port Charlotte. We’ll go right past there, so then we will technically be 100%. So part of me feels like this isn’t actually the end quite yet. While we’re here, we’ll try to get our picture taken with our flags and take down the gold flag. We’ll put up the platinum one for next Wednesday when we will OFFICIALLY cross our wake. I think we maybe shouldn’t make the official announcement until then. I’m such a ‘finisher’ kind of person, not a ‘close-enough’ one. 💁‍♀️

In the meantime, I went for a walk around the waterfront park to revel in the Sarasota vibe. Here is what we affectionately call “The Kiss” statue. It was recently moved from it’s old location due to road construction, so now it is in the park here.

“Unconditional Surrender”was created by sculptor J. Seward Johnson, and a WWII veteran Jack Curran bought it and donated it to the City of Sarasota. It celebrates a proud moment in history when the Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, thus ending WWII. Among the celebrants in Times Square in New York City were a U.S. sailor and nurse embracing amidst the multitude of joy makers, and that is what prompted this sculpture.

Oh look! There’s a pretty little Girl out there! Can you believe that when we bought her in 2015, she had 950 hours on her. Now she has 2951. We’ve put 2000 hours on her, with multiple trips to the Florida Keys, a trip to the Bahamas, and two Great Loops which included Chesapeake Bay, four out of five of the Great Lakes, Canada, and several Inland Rivers that are the heart of America. She’s ready for her next big adventure in the Pacific Northwest, and she’s even going to go through the Panama Canal …without us! She really is a world traveler. 🌎 P.S. …. if you figure an average speed of 8mph, that equals 16,000 miles! 😳 Dude. That’s alotta water past these props!!

There is a really pretty fountain here in the Bayfront park, with dolphins.

Oh! Speaking of dolphins, we had several of them welcome us to the marina right after we settled in! They were having lunch, and I saw one of them stand up out of the water and dance backwards with a fish in his mouth! Too bad I didn’t catch that on video!!

OK. Back out to my walk around the park, there were some really pretty peek-a-boo looks out to the bay.

Lots of big rocks are piled up as a wave break along the beach, and this one caught my eye. Look at that curly-Q right in the rock! How cool is that?!

This statue was cute, near the children’s playground. It is titled “Olympic Wannabees”.

O’Leary’s Tiki Hut is right here, so we may have to come visit sometime. We’ve been here before, and it’s a fun spot right on the water with sand in your sandals.

Marina Jack’s has a casual outside restaurant, an indoor lounge/bar, and a nice fancy schmancy white table cloth kind of place upstairs. Perhaps we’ll scope out the casual establishment since we’ve never been in here in the nearly 12 years that we’ve owned our condo. Shame on us!

Our daughter Janea came and picked us up and took us home so that we could get Mr. Lincoln (Kenny’s truck). We purchased a marina parking pass for $25 since we’ll be in and out for the next week, and the parking lot has a 3 hour limit. We’ll start taking some things home that we don’t need (like WINTER clothes), and do some laundry. We’re here for a week, so by day six, we’ll try to get down to some bare bones so that we don’t have a ton of stuff to take off of Island Girl after she’s pulled out of the water. We’ll get Stuart off of the back, take the bikes home, all kinds of stuff to do.

This is nearly the end of our adventure together! It is October 20. We left home on March 20. Seven months as of today! I don’t know what I’ll do in the evenings when I don’t have you to write to. And your coffee in the morning is going to be missing me. 😏. It’ll be like drinking black coffee when you’re used to having some Irish Cream in it. Heehee!
But don’t cry yet- 😥 I’ll do at least one more episode with our Platinum flag, and some statistics from the trip.