Day 2 - Venice

Russ had made reservations for the Royal Palm Marina on Lemon Bay in Englewood for our stay tonight. We pulled out of the beautiful marina in Sarasota with ease, and started down south. While overcast the temperature was nice and the houses along the banks of the ICW were stunning.

We got a bit of practice with hailing bridges on this section of the ICW. Some of them are way too short for use to go under. One was a swing bridge, which was cool to watch them maneuver. The second bridge, Albee Bridge, raised on hinges, like most do. We mistakenly identified the bridge (I think we called it Bayshore Point Bridge) and got no response. We tried three times. Finally, they hailed us, a bit annoyed that we didn't know their name. We had identified ourselves on the hail ("Bayshore Point Bridge, this is Knot 4 Sailing, and we are southbound" so they could have made a guess). Anyway, we stopped, they lifted, all went well. From now on we'll triple check bridge names.

Pretty houses!

Morning in Sarasota -- see the pretty boats!

Amidst this bit of chaos Russ got a phone call. It was Royal Palms calling to inform us that Friday morning they were expecting high winds (30 mph), and they didn't think we'd be safe to dock there. Great. Russ tried to call a number of other marinas along the way without success, either they were full or they couldn't handle a boat our size. He contacted the Crow's Nest Marina in Venice who had space and were happy to have us. But we missed the "exit" by then and had to double back a bit.

Thus we came to our second docking, which is along a pier, not in a slip. We followed a pontoon boat that behaved as if their captain was also green, moving real slow and backing up a few time so get into his dock, all of which was in our path. Eventually they got it worked out and we were clear to dock. Total trip time about three hours.

Copilot pooches

The weather thing is going to be a thing. Various weather apps tell us the winds will kick up tonight and be pretty strong through the day tomorrow, culminating in thunderstorms in the late afternoon and evening. If it's wrong we may head out in the morning but the current plan is to stay here tomorrow too.

Anchor day will have to wait. We're rescheduled for Monday.