Uncharted waters

We continuously enjoy the sights of white pelicans, and they
always seem to be near Tampa Bay when we travel through.

We left the quaint little town of Gulfport around 8:15 this morning after a very enjoyable evening out for dinner last night. We took a route we had never taken before. Yesterday we saw a boat turn around at the bridge we were heading for because it did not have enough clearance at high tide. We were hoping we would have enough clearance at low tide and we did by at least a couple of feet.
Our next obstacle was Tampa Bay.  It was predicted to be a light chop, but this was the smoothest we have ever crossed it.

Coast Guard cutter "Vise" doing what they announced as
routine maintenance to red marker "70" in Tampa Bay.
Notice how calm the water is.

Being able to make it under that low bridge helped to make for an even shorter travel day of 22 miles to anchor at our third new anchorage in a row for us.  We anchored just south of Anna Maria Island behind Jewfish Key about four hours after departure. That gave us plenty of time to explore. We decided to by dinghy since the water was so pretty here near Longboat Pass. Once we were near Bradenton Beach we decided to go across the ICW to the mainland side and try to figure out where we were by land in the Spring on the way up. Once that was a success we turned back to see "Teasa" coming through the Anna Maria bascule bridge, so we headed for them. We waved, hollered, and welcomed them to almost their destination. We kind of raced them to the anchorage and arrived just as they were putting their anchor down. We climbed aboard their sailboat and did a days worth of catching up. After a couple of hours we dinghied alone over to Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant to meet William and poor 'ole Judy from "Optimystique", who keep their sailboat in Bradenton, but will be bringing it down to Marathon again after the holidays.