Sunday, October 2nd, Home to Cape Coral
We had a late evening last so it makes sense that we slept until almost 8 am this morning – that’s really late for us! The best part about sleeping last night is that it’s the first night since about April that we’ve slept without the air conditioning running. It was cool last night, temperatures reaching the low sixties, which was just heavenly. I slept better than I had a long time – nothing like cool fresh air to keep me snuggled in bed.
Starting at 9 am, the Sarasota Yacht Club served complimentary coffee and scones on the porch overlooking the docks – quite a civilized way to start the day!
With our bellies full, we eased our way out of our barnacle-covered slip by 9:30 am, unsure of this evening destination. We got underway and headed south down Little Sarasota Bay. When we called the Blackburn Point Swing Bridge, the bridge tender called back to let us know that it’d be a few moments to clear the bridge of pedestrians – folks who were watching a rowing regatta. We only had to wait a few minutes before the bridge swung open – and this was the sight as it did: a sole four-man boat on the other side - a small introduction to what was coming:
As soon as we were through the bridge, we unexpectedly found ourselves in the midst of the Sarasota 5000 Regatta – with small boats all around us: singles, doubles, four-men and eight-men boats. Ack! We slowed the boat down to a crawl, and motored up the 3.5 miles of Blackburn Bay with the boats all around us, trying to stay out of the way, and making sure our wake didn’t bother the low-freeboard boats. For a good portion of it, we had this 8-women boat keeping time with us:
This is what the channel looked like for 3.5 miles: small boats all around! Very disconcerting when we’re so much bigger, and they’re trying to race. Fortunately, the racing was by a time trial method, so boats came at us one at a time when they were racing, and they stayed to the left of us. The boats in the channel with us or to our right were those heading south to the starting line so that they could turn around and race back. It really was exciting to watch all the activity and be right smack in the middle of it.
At the south end of Blackburn Bay we finally left behind all the regatta boats, and called the Albee Bridge Tender to request that he open for us. The bridge tender has his job down pat: he timed it perfectly so that we never even had to slow down – it opened as we approached and we sailed right through. Nice!
We motored past the Venice Pass (out to the Gulf of Mexico) and continued on down the GICW. This is the section that turns into a man-made canal, and it passes by the old Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus winter quarters (1960-1992). The buildings have some wonderful circus-themed murals painted on the sides of their buildings:
As we motored down Lemon Bay in Englewood, we decided that we had enough to do this coming week that we’d just as soon make it home to Cape Coral today instead of stopping for the night and getting home tomorrow. It’d be a long day, but it was so beautiful – not too hot, and despite the forecast, not too windy. Beautiful day just to keep motoring along. Here’s Mike at the helm as we motored down Pine Island Sound.
Our wildlife sights were numerous today: lots of manatees north of Venice, and hundreds of dolphin from Charlotte Harbor south. I can never get enough of watching the dolphin play – they are just the most amazing creatures. They seem to get as big a kick out of watching and interacting with us as we do with them.
At 4:30 pm we pulled into our canal in Cape Coral, having run 70 nautical miles in 7 hours – that’s pretty good time! Again, we’re pleased with this new-to-us boa and like the option of running faster than we could have on our last cruising boat.
As we motored up our canal, we saw a dock-building barge working on a neighbor’s dock and it was taking up quite a bit of the width of the canal – very similar situation to the day we left. Fortunately, today we had just enough room to squeak by and reach our dock (about two houses up on the left in the picture). Home!
All told we covered 308 nautical miles (354 statute miles) up and down the western coast of Florida. Here’s an overview of the route:
Thanks for reading along!
