on the water again

Exactly one month ago we arrived in Indian Rocks Beach.  I didn’t get around to blogging our last travel day as I suspected I wouldn’t.  That was back on March 18.  We pulled up anchor out of Palma Sola Bay near Prices Key in the vicinity of Brandenton at 7:45 a.m.  If I remember correctly, it was one of our flattest crossings of Tampa Bay.  At 12:15 p.m. we pulled into Madeira Beach City Marina to fuel up and pump out.  About a half hour later we were back underway.  An hour after that we were pulling into slip 22 at Holiday Inn Harbourside with Bob and Barbara from “The Bar-B” there to catch our lines.

This morning Bob helped us to cast our lines at 8:00 a.m.  An hour later we were passing “Conched Out Too” at their overnight anchorage as the free docks in Indian Rocks Beach were full yesterday afternoon when they came by.  We will be traveling this spring with Bill and Patty beginning with doing the armpit of Florida instead of crossing the Gulf of Mexico.  They followed in behind us a while later only to eventually overtake us near Tarpon Springs. 

Today the winds were blowing pretty straight out of the east so we decided it might be better to anchor closer to the western shore just north of Tarpon Springs, rather than on the eastern side of Anclote Key as we had originally planned.  We actually even talked of anchoring on the western side of Anclote Key out in the Gulf of Mexico, but that didn’t sound like the most comfortable idea to me. 

At about 12:45 p.m. we dropped anchor about as close to shore as we could in the shallow water.  We ended up in about seven feet of water, but not very close to shore.

Bill asked earlier if we knew of a diver he could hire because he heard what he believed to be something on his starboard shaft possibly hitting the hull.  He came to pick us up via dinghy a short while after we were anchored.  It didn’t take Ray long to diagnose that his cutter on that side had come dislodged off of the shaft.  We all realized that must have happened when he just removed and replaced his transmission on that side while in Fort Myers Beach.  Once Ray had it all back in place we all just hung out on their boat.  We were bragging on how the wind and waves were laying down.  Not long after that the winds shifted to straight out of the north.  Not as predicted at all.  We even checked every weather sight we could think of to see if things had changed, but no.  Definitely no protection.  We hope it was just the sea breeze this afternoon and that the wind goes back to its predicted ENE direction.