Fresh Water Rinse

It was four nights at anchor in Redington Shores.  On Sunday Ray's childhood friends Scott and Kevin came to have lunch with us.  On Monday we drove over to Orlando to visit Noelle and Abbie.  On Tuesday William and Judy came to anchor with us on "Optimystique".  A trolley ride and walk to lunch at Mike's Pizza at about 1:00 p.m. along with "The Bar-B" continued into a stop at Lulu's to quench our thirst from the hot walk back to the trolley that took us to Wahoo's into dinner.  Scott came to see us again along with his girlfriend Lisa, Barbara's daughter Heidi also joined us when she got off of work.  It was a fun time that lasted a little too late into the night.
Therefore we did not make first light this morning.  William was ribbing us a little bit about that but said second light was okay.  At 7:30 a.m. Ray pulled up the muddy anchor by hand again.  We still have not been able to get the windlass off despite continuous attempts, even again today while underway.  We cruised along trying to keep an average seven mile per hour speed.  Tampa Bay was probably the smoothest we have ever been across it.
Just about the time we got to Sarasota it started raining.  We wanted it.  We had not been able to wash the salt off the boat yet since the Gulf crossing and it's a mess.  When it really poured at the south end of Sarasota Bay Ray got out there in his bathing suit, put some soap on the scrub pad and washed it the best he could with the help of the good Lord.
After that it was even steamier outside.  They are breaking record high temperatures around here and the humidity is just ridiculous.  We continued on sweating all the way.
Once we were through our last bridge opening of two today we called Jeff on "Jeremiah" to let him know we were close to Venice.  At about 4:45 p.m. he dinghied over and showed us how to navigate into the free dock after 61 miles of travel for us today.  We caught up on how everyone's summer went.
After the sun went down and helped to cool it off a little bit we followed Jeff in our dinghy over to his house so he could take the dogs back.  Then the three of us hopped in our dinghy to have dinner at Pops with Jeff guiding us with his local knowledge through the mangroves.  Carolyn from Maryland met us there via car.  We had a lovely late evening again before dinghying back.
We will stay here at the free dock until Saturday or until they kick us off.