We had a fun time at the Ft Lauderdale International Boat Show. There were zillions of very expensive boats, and we barely even noticed them! We spent our whole entire time inside looking at STUFF. One of our primary goals was to talk to Cross Chartering Yacht Transport Company about logistics for shipping Island Girl to the Pacific Northwest. We are already booked and have made a deposit with them for April, but the actual date could be anytime in April between the 1st and the 30th. One of my navigational planning questions was, how much lead time will we have? Since we have to get the Girl from the west side of Florida over to the east side (Ft Lauderdale) to be loaded on the ship, there are some logistics and planning to do. Our preferred route is to go through Lake Okeechobee, since it isn’t quite as sensitive to weather and wave conditions compared to crossing the Gulf waters from Ft Myers to the Keys. But one of the locks on the Okeedokee route is going to be out of service from January 1 – March 31! ☹️. So if we have to be in Ft Lauderdale by April 1, we’ll have to go around through the Florida Keys to get there. That isn’t a terrible option, but it will take longer, and IF we have to go that way, we might actually decide to take our time and enjoy our last opportunity EVER to be boating in our own boat in the Keys. So, we talked to the fella that was there, and he said that they should have an idea by February regarding the April timing. It depends on lots of things, including how many boats they have lined up to ship, and if they are loading ships in Ft Lauderdale every four, five, or six weeks. He also said that we could slide our date to March or May if we gave them plenty of notice. Hmmm. OK. This kind of flexibility is really hard on this Type-A Planner Navigator person!! 🤨 I guess I’ll plan both basic routes and then just wait.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 Temp: 82/67, Humidity: 56/90%, Top Wind: all directions, then SE7 mph, Precip: sunny, Miles Traveled: 78
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Today was the OFFICIAL wake crossing day! We knew we had a really long day though, so we were up before the sun to leave Marina Jack’s and get on our way. Today we were headed to Safe Cove Boat Yard in Port Charlotte. This is the yard where we have previously pulled Island Girl out when we have work to do on her. She was there all summer in 2020 for hurricane season. We plan to have her there for at least the next three months. It’s just easier than trying to find a marina these days, if you can believe it! It’s a long ways to get there by water, and with no wake zones it would take us over nine hours total. We even have to go through a lock to travel the last 10 miles in fresh water to the boat yard. The unfortunate thing is that it is shallow water near the lock, and we’ll get there at nearly low tide. 😳 We generally time our transit at the lock at mid tide or higher and the local advice is that you need high tide if your boat draft is five feet or more. We are more like 3’9” so we’ll just tiptoe in and keep our fingers crossed. Tomorrow’s weather is going to be BAD to the BONE with near Gale strength winds and rain, so we really need to get to Safe Cove TODAY.
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.
Monday, October 18, 2021 Temp: 82/68, Humidity: 48/73%, Top Wind: E14 mph, Precip: breezy & sunny, Miles Traveled: 25
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It was a bit breezy this morning, but it was scheduled to calm a little bit by early afternoon. We were only going 25 miles from here, south to Gulfport today, so we waited until check-out time to leave. We’re supposed to be gone by 11:00, so that is when we pulled our lines and bugged out. We were only traveling on the ICW today, so the wind was really only a concern for whenever we reached our destination and tried to dock in it. As it turned out, it was a really nice comfy day on the water! We’re definitely back into the land of big money… And big houses!
There were a few bridges to go under, but they were all just tall enough that we didn’t have to request any of them to open. This one goes to Treasure Island…. doesn’t that sound like a fun place?
In just over three hours, we found the Gulfport Municipal Marina. We’ve never been here before, and it is really a nice protected place. We filled up our fuel tanks again with 215 gallons to replace what we burned through when we crossed the Gulf…. at $3.26/gallon. I’ll let you do the math. 😬 And for me…. it was worth every penny to get across that big ol’ body of water as fast as we did!
They just have a linear floating dock here for transients, and fortunately we got one of the few spots. We spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out where to go from here and for how long. We need to burn up about ten days before we’ll get Island Girl pulled out of the water. A few of the marinas that I called have no transient space because they are 100% booked with seasonal or annual contracts. SHEESH! I’m glad we are OK with pulling her out of the water, because there are NO long term contracts to be had anywhere either. Even here in Gulfport there is over a 100 person waiting list.
Another thing we’re contemplating navigating around, literally, is that we heard on the VHF radio today that the Blackburn Bridge is not operational, and the length of time to repair it is unknown. It is south of Sarasota, and that means we would have to travel outside in the Gulf, from Tampa Bay to Venice. (There are really no good, dependable inlets in between due to shifting sands and shoaling.) So if we go from here to Sarasota, and it’s still broken, we’d likely have to come back north to the Bay to go out into the Gulf. Unless we got out the oars and rowed out one of the Sarasota passes at high tide, maybe. 🤔. I guess we’ll worry about that when the time comes. I will make some more calls tomorrow to see what we can do. Our goal is to be close to home to start unpacking the boat and taking some stuff home. At least our daughter is at our house right now, so she can come pick us up and take us home to get the truck. The logistics of coordinating a marina, the boat, and a car at multiple locations was making our heads spin. 🤯
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Tuesday, October 19, 2021 Temp: 83/67, Humidity: 47/87%, Top Wind: E12 mph, Precip: breezy & sunny, Miles Traveled: none
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It was a beautiful morning with a nice breeze, not humid, and warm pretty sunsine. It was just perfect for enjoying coffee and The Good Book outside. 😊
Since it was a stay home day and I knew we were going to go find the Gulfport Brewing Company later, it was a good idea to fix some bacon and eggs for breakfast. Yum 😋 We made phone calls and got on the “pull-out” schedule at the boat yard for the 28th or 29th. AND, I was so happy to get a week at the downtown marina in Sarasota, at Marina Jack’s. It isn’t a cheap place to stay, but their weekly rate makes it actually less per day than we’re paying here! Plus, it is pretty close to home, so it will be easy to take stuff home from there. And…. it’s right downtown Sarasota, so we’ll be able to wander around town and see stuff that we have never scoped out when we’re home. We can explore Sarasota like we do all the other towns on the loop. Once we got that all done, we went for a walk to the town of Gulfport. It’s a little less than a mile from the marina. What a cute little colorful town!
I was really surprised that there were several streets that were brick. Many of the houses were painted in bright island colors.
HA! Call me crazy – it’s a photo of a parking lot. But we know we’re close to home when the parking lots are made of shells, not gravel.
Like most of the establishments on the main street in town, the Brewery is in a house.
This was really fun! They had a whole bunch of outdoor seating, but we were kinda warm after our big walk, so we sat at the bar. We each had a beverage and a flat bread, and enjoyed talking with the other folks at the bar about their RV travels. They had some of the same observations that we’ve had…. there are a LOT of RVs on the road and camping space is not always easy to find. Plus, so many RV drivers are new to the scene, and aren’t very good at it. 😮 The Brewery house kinda still feels like a house, with comfy seating and tables for gathering. I liked this woven giant checkers table cover.
More tables in this room and that’s the bar back there, with the kitchen behind it.
We wandered around town and enjoyed all of the colorful buildings and designs.
We found a cute courtyard with a big patio and several establishments. Among them was the North End Taphouse. We visited with a couple of fellas there and really enjoyed the small town feel around here. Kenny says he wished we had a place like this at home. I told him that we might… but we never venture out to find it!
This was the main street! There really is a restaurant-house in those trees.
And this one looked nice. I think it was Italian, because their cute little outside tables had red and white checkered table cloths.
We walked along the waterfront and discovered they have a nice long pier here. Out yonder there is a big mooring field that belongs to the marina. It’s pretty inexpensive to rent a mooring ball if you’re OK with dinghying in to town. I don’t know what the rules are, but usually when there’s a big mooring field like this, the local government doesn’t want you just dropping an anchor. Although we saw several boats just anchored and not on balls when we came in.
This made me giggle. Somebody has a fun sense of decorating! Plus, it keeps you from being stabbed by the pokey ends of the cactus!
Back home at the marina, there really wasn’t a good view of the West for the sunset. This picture is looking east as the setting sun changed the colors of the clouds and sky.
This was the best I could get looking west.
Tomorrow we’ll peel out and head for Sarasota. Since we cannot go back to the same dock that we started from, we may call it the official end of our loop. What do you think? We’ll be about five miles north of where we actually started. Maybe we should wait until we go past the channel to our old dock? That would be technically accurate. But we won’t have anybody to celebrate with as we cruise past it. 😕 I vote for Marina Jacks for the changing of the flags and champagne ceremony!
Sunday, October 17, 2021 Temp: 77/68, Humidity: 52/81%, Top Wind: NW12 mph, Precip: none- sunny, Miles Traveled: NONE!!
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This is one of the funnier tour boats here at Clearwater Beach Marina. SHARK! The tours were running strong again today, so we had lots of rockin & rollin goin on in our slip. The time travelers bugged out and left us all alone after noon. It was a beautiful day, with the humidity down. I could actually open the doors and windows…. my favorite kind of weather!! Sunshine and below 70 at night, around 80 in the daytime. 😎 And I always love waking up to sunshine, which is something like 360 days a year here.
This big tour boat really rolls us when it goes in and out. Surprisingly, it’s a fishing tour!
With the temperature outside only in the upper 70’s, and the humidity down, it was pretty darn comfortable out there. A good time to rinse down the boat. Here is a picture of some salt. This is not wet… it’s just crusty salt! So Kenny got out the Salt Away, and sprayed the Girl down. The product doesn’t actually dissolve the salt, but it makes it let go so it can be rinsed away.
It puts out kind of a sudsy spray, the suds gather up the salt crystals, and then you just rinse it off with plain water. It really does get the salt off!!
Once he was done and we got the windows all cleaned and dry, he started working on his captain’s chair. It is a bit wobbly and I’m afraid he’s just going to go splat one day, and that would not be good!! While he worked on that, I went for a stroll around Clearwater Beach. Mr. Pelican was keeping a close eye on us.
See? We’re almost all alone.
I promised you some dolphin statues today, so that gave me something to look for on my walk.
I don’t think we’ve ever been to Clearwater Beach by land, so it was fun to just stroll around and take in the sights.
This sculpture was in the main beach park, and says that it is the “Official Start of the Clearwater Dolphin Trail”. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I asked the Google about it… apparently there are something like 140 of them!! Trust me – I didn’t find them all!
Out by the pier there were all kinds of toys to play on, and music playing, so it was a really fun atmosphere.
I was surprised at how rough the water was! But then again, this is why we came here on Friday, because this cold front was coming! There was a lot of wave action.
But that didn’t keep the beach goers away. I walked quite a ways in the water, but there are itty bitty shells so after awhile, it gets a little rough on the feet. The water was so warm, I love it!!
Along the boardwalk, or “beachwalk”, there were fun buggies available to rent.
Here is just a small piece of the beachwalk. There are lots of entry points to the beach, each with a rinse off tower topped by a turtle.
HEY! Flowers! We haven’t had any flowers for quite some time! As I walked along, I was so thankful to be back in Florida. It is so beautiful and vibrant with life.
The Opal Sands Resort is where we had dinner last night. It looks pretty schmancy from the road!
This dolphin was channeling his inner zebra stripes!
This guy was hidden in an alcove.
A good thing to know around here for transportation is that the Jolly Trolley runs all along here and is a great option. It’s $5 for unlimited rides all day long, and it runs all over the place around here!
One last dolphin for you, then I found a Starbucks and bought us each a treat, so I headed back to the boat.
We just hung out and watched some football. I made reservations for us to go to the Gulfport Municipal Marina tomorrow, which is south of here, and on the way towards Sarasota. They have about the best diesel prices around, and we need fuel! We burned about 200 gallons on the crossing, so we still have about 100 gallons, but we usually don’t let it go much below that. We still haven’t heard back from the marina in Venice where we would like to put Island Girl for about a week. Tomorrow is Monday, so we’ll be able to call the yard in Port Charlotte and see if we can schedule a date and spot to pull her out of the water for awhile. It shouldn’t be a problem. This is the time of year when people are putting their boats IN the water after hurricane season. We had dinner on board and just relaxed some more. We’re starting to ease ourselves into a lifestyle where we don’t travel every day. We’re going to have to find things to do to keep us active once we get off of Island Girl. 😳. Diet and exercise should be at the top of the list. We’ve both gained some poundage on this voyage!
Saturday, October 16, 2021 Temp: 83/75, Humidity: 63/82%, Top Wind: W9 mph, Precip: none- sunny, Miles Traveled: NONE!!
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This was the best sleep-in day ever. I took a tylenol PM last night, and I was one with the mattress! Let the muscles and brain relax! Ahhhhh. It’s so good to be (almost) home. Although, I picked a marina that has a dozen or so tour boats that come and go ALL DAY LONG. At least it’s calm at night. But during the day, there is constant wave action. And this being the weekend has everybody on the move. There are fishing charters, dolphin watching, sunset cruises, dinner cruises, booze cruises, and pirates!
Friday, October 15, 2021 Temp: 85/68, Humidity: 59/100%, Top Wind: NW10 mph, Precip: none- cloudy & sunny, Miles Traveled: 176 !
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Here is the route. Ready or not, today was the day! The most challenging, dreaded, awful day of the entire Loop. The reason I said I’d never do the loop again, yet here I am. What! – is it like childbirth?! You forget the pain until you’re on the brink of it and then suddenly remember and ask yourself – what was I thinking!? The one good reassuring thing was that Kenny said that he slept great last night and had no concerns whatsoever. So that helped calm my nerves.
Friday, October 15, 2021 Temp: 85/68, Humidity: 59/100%, Top Wind: NW10 mph, Precip: none- cloudy & sunny, Miles Traveled: 176 !
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I’ll fill in details later and get all caught up, so check back. Just want you to know that we crossed the Gulf of Mexico today and are in Clearwater now!! WOOPWOOP!!!!
Thursday, October 14, 2021 Temp: 83/69, Humidity: 71/100%, Top Wind: SE8 mph, Precip: none- bright & sunny, Miles Traveled: 95
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We were going to have a long day today, so it was a get-up-and-go-before-the-sun kind of day. The morning was beautiful, and no bugs! Humid, but no bugs. There was a lamp post right next to the boat, and there were NO BUGS this morning. Well glory be, Maybel, we’re back to salt water!! There are still a few random small spiders hiding out on the boat that think they can survive, but … they won’t. Trust me! ☠️
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 Temp: 85/69, Humidity: 57/90%, Top Wind: E8 mph, Precip: bright & sunny, Miles Traveled: 68
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I’m starting this post with the BEST of the day – the sunset over the Gulf! I had no idea how much I have missed this until we went to dinner at the beach, I had a fruity rum drink and some delicious grilled grouper, walked in the sand, and watched the sunset. I am so glad we’re almost home. It has been a great trip, but in the words of Dorothy Gale, “There’s no place like home”. I’m usually homesick for Washington State and my family and all that is there because that’s where I’m from. But man on man, have I missed the sand, palm trees, sea breeze, dolphins, gentle lapping of waves on my feet, and sunset beauty beyond belief. Panama City isn’t home – we still have a few hundred miles to go. But it really teased me more than I expected.
