On To St. Peterburg

The winds died completely as we motored on placid waterways down Matanzas River, across Tampa Bay to St. Petersburg. Atlantica, the lead boat, and Sand Castle are visible a mile or so ahead, going under the Tampa Bay Skyway Bridge.

 

 

 



St. Petersburg was a terrific stop. The city mooring field is very small, holding only about 12 boats in a mostly circular basin. Winter must bring huge crowds, but in June, the cruisers are few. Our weather has been moderate for June, mostly in the 80s during the day, low 70s at night, with the typical afternoon thunderstorms kicking up erratically. So far, we managed to be at anchor in protected waters or moored before they hit.

 

 We found the Spanish tapas restaurant, Cerviche, in the downtown area. Absolutely the very best tapas we've ever had. Jan celebrated her birthday there. The food was so good that we went back the next night for Paella.....again, the very best.



During the day, there was a wonderful local museum to visit, right next to the municipal basin. Not only did they have interesting local history, which included a wooden seaplane, a replica of the original first seaplane to fly commercially in Florida, but several of the plane's builders were at the museum  that day. Turns out this is the only replica of the plane that was actually able to fly....using a riding lawn mower engine, since no originals were available. The museum also contained the largest privately owned signed baseball collection in the world.....three rooms full, really fascinating to any baseball fan.

 

St. Petersburg is home to the world class Salvadore Dali Museum, with its unique architecture and insightful tape recorded tour. Learned a lot about Dali. I always thought he was crazy, but did not realize that he was also brilliant in the symbolism of his work.

Bradenton Discovered

From Long Boat Key, we motored over to the Bradenton area for a visit to two interesting sites. We anchored in a large cove off Snead Island, opposite  Emerson Point Nature Preserve. Our first day there, we dinghied across the Manatee River to the Hernando DeSoto National Park. This was a bonus find. We knew nothing about the park and were greeted with a wealth of fascinating information about the explorations of the Spanish, in particular, Hernando DeSoto. Beautiful walking park, with well-marked signs and displays explaining the Spanish presence and exploration from the west coast of Florida all the way through Arkansas, down to Texas and back. DeSoto died somewhere in Arkansas.

Life-size cutouts showing Native American life.



Beautiful Beach at DeSoto Park







Rick and Jose and DeSoto National Park



Following a cookout dinner at Emerson Point and a good nights sleep, we investigated the nature preserve. This is a great place, with miles of easy trails, kayaking in rivers and lagoons, piers for fishing, fire towers for climbing up to see spectacular views, and an abundance of nature. One of our more interesting sights was that of a group of professional photographers, with lenses aimed at a dead palm tree. Inside the tree, in three different holes were a families of woodpeckers, whistling ducks, and wood ducks. Turns out the whistling ducks had commandeered a hole made by the woodpeckers,smashing the eggs, and moving in, a few weeks earlier. The irate woodpeckers still chase the ducks whenever they see them coming and going. These photographers gathered every morning for weeks, filming the story. We were treated to a whistling duck/woodpecker chase, while watching.

 

The Matanzas River parks were so interesting that we never made it to the town of Bradenton. That will have to happen next time. And so, on to St. Petersburg.

A Challenging Entry

Two separate friends had told us that one of their favorite anchorages was Long Boat Key, so we were really looking forward to a stop there and perhaps a visit to  one of the two restaurants ashore.  Sand Castle had developed a problem with a broken dinghy davit. Their dinghy was held in place, but not securely and until they were able to get it repaired in Bradenton, preferred to go up the intercoastal. So Atlantica and Wind Dancer took the outside route, heading for the Longboat Key inlet. We had been told to stay to the right, but no one mentioned that the sand bar had moved dramatically from its marked position. Fortunately for us, the Bascule bridge was located within view of the channel opening. We had radioed ahead to tell the bridge operator we were on our way into the channel and he was watching for us. He called via radio to tell us we were way off the channel and to follow a local fishing boat into the channel. I am telling you, those red and green markers meant NOTHING. We had to travel parallel to the beach, about 500 yards from the nearest marke,  for about 3oo yards and take a sharp turn to starboard as we came opposite the distant bridge. Thank you bridge operator, because without you one or both of us would still be sitting on a sand bar a  half mile or so off shore. By the time we got to the anchorage, which was in a pretty cove and very protected, it was late in the day. The anchorage was very crowded for the depth and weather conditions, and filled with sailors and several abandoned boats, one of which broke loose and was saved by Luke and Jan, Jose and Char. This is not a place or an entry we would ever repeat.

Beautiful Cayo Costa and Cabbage key

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, or in this case a wavy line. So rather than go 40+ miles around the point at Fort Myers, we decided to go 30 miles up the Florida Intercoastal to our next stop at Cayo Costa. This is a lovely state park encompassing the island and surrounding waters. We anchored in Pelican Bay. Directions need to be followed closely, or you are likely to end up aground. You may end up aground anyway, but it's all sand, so just go slow, very slow. At Red marker 74, turn toward the entrance and hug the strip of sand to your starboard side. A little more than halfway down the sand bar, begin aiming for the park dock. With our 6 foot draft, we edged up as far up the bay as possible, but ran out of deep water and were forced to anchor unprotected from the east. Still it is a beautiful spot. For $2, you can go ashore and tie your dinghy to the dock. The park rangers will take you out to the beach on scheduled runs, or you can hike the trail. Once there, we hiked the beach around to the north edge of the island and then went inland to return to the park headquarters.

 

Wonderful hike, we saw lots of wildlife, including this rare gopher tortoise.

The sunrise was beautiful. On the third day, we moved our anchorage to an area a few miles away, off the intercoastal near Useppa Island directly across from Cabbage Key. The island has a nice restaurant, with beautiful views and flowering poinciana trees. This is also the home of a great heron called Pretty Boy Floyd. pretty Boy has discovered that he prefers cooked fish, caught by others and he hangs around the restaurant patio begging for scraps, which he carries to the water bucket to wash down his lunch.

There is also a water tower to climb and paths to hike. Our morning sunrise off Useppa was especially pretty.



 Leaving Charlotte Harbor behind, we took the shortcut from the channel opening past  the old docks on Boca Grande. The cut looked easy to follow, but w hadn't counted on the fishing competition getting underway just at the point where we turned into the cut and just at the exact time we approached. There were literally dozens of small fishing boats accompanied by referees in their boats, milling around in all directions. They were very polite and stayed out of the way, but we were in really close quarters there as the water shrinks to 7 feet and a width of a hundred yards or so, shoals on every side.

And so we moved on, motor sailing this time to Bradenton and St. Petersburg via a 2 day stop in Venice to wash clothes, shower on shore, and do some biking through town. The cut at Venice is deep and easy to navigate. We stopped at the Crows Nest Marina, just inside the channel opening. . There is only room for about 4 boats on the face dock and their inner docks are really tight to get into, if you are a sailboat, so reservations are important.

On to Fort Myers

Leaving the Ten Thousand Islands, motoring, because our wonderful easterly winds had fallen to under 5 knots, we decided to make a long day of it and reached Fort Myers Beach late in the afternoon. The 60 + mile trip involved 8 hours of motoring and about an hour of sailing in winds building so fast that we went from no sails to full sails, to reefed sails all within the hour. Fort Myers Beach has recently dredged its main entry, and unless your mast is over 63 feet, it is an easy trip up the river and under the Sky bridge to the 70 ball, $15 a day, city mooring field, run by the Matanzas Inn. I suspect the mooring field is full all winter, but by late May, the snowbirds have flown. Plenty of bus transportation, down to the beaches and groceries on Estero Island, and a longer, trickier bus route into the city of Fort Myers and the tourist sites there.  We did take the long bus ride, with its 3 transfers to visit the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford homes, side by side along the river in Fort Myers, a fascinating tour with lots of interesting information.

We decided to take a cab back to the last bus stop, a good decision, since a sudden thunderstorm, with drenching rains and winds gusting into the high 40s, hit within a half hour of our return. We had just enough time to take down our $15 Home Depot tarp, disguised as a makeshift sun shelter.

 Storm over in 45 minutes and sunset and calm returned.



Fort Myers meant that Char and Jose, on Atlantica, our other buddy boat, finally caught up with us. Fort Myers Beach was a terrific spot, with great dining at Nervous Nellies and the Matanzas Inn.

EVERGLADES CITY: A TRIP BACK TO THE PAST



Our trip from Boot Key was a great sail with winds gusting to the low 20s, an exhilarating sail shared by buddy boat, Sand Castle. We stopped first near Little Shark River, anchoring well off shore to escape the reported bug kingdom located in the Everglades. As we were on the lee shore, we rested easy, at anchor with three other sailboats. Morning saw us continuing north, with the same winds, to Everglades City, a trip back in time.



 

We entered the Barron River at Indian Key Pass, part of the Ten Thousand Islands, and followed the comfortably deep channel to Russell. The river is about 10 miles long and passes hundreds of islands of all sizes on it's way to Everglades City. We anchored about a mile and a half in at Russell Pass, turning to the port at green #7. Entering the pass itself was difficult only because we had never been there before and had followed exact directions available on Active Captain. We bumped aground and backed off, warning the two boats behind us of shallow water. One of the boats anchored there regularly and offered to lead us into the pass. He too bumped aground, but with the confidence of experience realized that the channel must have moved further to the west. He radioed back that he'd seen 6 feet, but we moved even further to the left and found slightly over 7 feet at the bar. The anchorage itself was in over 15 feet of water.

 

Thanks to the 10-12 knot breeze, and our bug screens after sunset, no biting insects annoyed us and because we were surrounded by islands, no waves either. Sand Castle, having left their hatch open after dusk was not so lucky.  This was a wonderful anchorage.

 

In the morning, we dinghied into the port itself. Deep draft boats can make it into the port at high tide, and return on the next high tide, but the dingy ride was a wonderful, slow trip past hundreds of islands and across a shallow bay, which at the time was kicked up by the wind. The Rod and Gun Club, a fantastic old inn and restaurant, which has a glorious past has a dock to tie up on the waterfront. Built in the 1920s, the club has entertained Hollywood stars filming locally, the excessively wealthy, and several presidents....the most recent being Richard Nixon.  The decor matches the name. The interior is filled with trophies of local wildlife, highly polished wood walls gleam in the darkness, and the cash register hails from the turn of the century, the 20th century, not the 21st.  We had heard mixed reviews of the restaurant, so after visiting the local museum, we headed for the Oyster House Restaurant.......another taxidermy paradise, a long walk down the road out of town, but with wonderful food. We did save room for dessert back at the Rod and Gun Club, eating thoroughly decadent homemade strawberry shortcake and lemonades on their breezy veranda, a  pleasant experince to share with friends from Sand Castle.