Venice & Ft. Myers - 1/23/11 - 1/24/11

Yesterday (Sunday) was the day that Christine, Greg and the girls left for their flight back to Pennsylvania. We sure enjoyed their visit even though the weather was a little chilly we are sure that it was much nicer than what they were going to see when they get home.


We pulled out of Twin Dolphin Marina at 10:15 for the 47 mile ride to Marine Max at Venice, FL (N 27 04.844 W 82 25.841) and immediately started passing nice homes again.


It was about 3 or 4 miles to the Tampa Bay which was really clear today but extremely rough with a beam chop on the starboard until we got to the inter coastal again in a few miles. This is the Sunshine Parkway Bridge that was covered with fog a few days ago.

More pretty homes. At least Ricki is starting to look at smaller places!

I have heard it said that if you can see a birds' feet in the water ... stay clear. What about fishermen?

We have passed some interesting boats on this trip. this one looked like a space ship coming at us.

These folks were on Sarasota Bay.

We had 3 swing bridges or bascule bridges to go under that required a call. Many have regular opening times so you have to time your trip so not to miss one and have to wait 30 minutes to an hour for the opening.

Lots and lots of these little monsters to catch in your prop. Some are actually in the channel so you have to keep alert. Although we have line cutters we still don't want to chance running over one.

Three boats followed us toward Venice. The first two were Present Moment and Royal Lady, fellow loopers that we have been with on and off since Joe Wheeler last October. Don't know who the 3rd boat is it just sort of caught us at the last bridge opening.

Ricki's next boat!

This was the last bridge to open before getting to Venice. Shortly after this bridge Quest and Present Moment both hit something in the channel. We started having a very strong vibration on the port side so we just idled that engine the last 10 miles to Marine Max and used the starboard for speed. This lowered our forward progress down to about 7 MPH which seemed very slow. Something I have not mentioned is the apparent love by Floridians for their manatees. Many areas along this shore has "Idle Speed - Manatee Area" signs and they mean SLOW or the water cops will ticket.

Pulled into Marine Max (Venice) at 4:30 for a side tie dockage across from the fuel dock.

Next morning at 8 a.m. I went to the service department to arrange for a haul out to check the damage from the incident yesterday.

You can see for yourself .... another bent prop. Good thing I had spares since they were installed and we were on the water again by 10:55 after getting 193 gallons of diesel, the first since Carrabelle (370 miles ago) and a pump out. Fuel consumption has gotten better since the injector repair.

The best still shot to date!

We really had to push the ol' boat to get to Ft. Myers in daylight since it was exactly 70 miles from Venice and we didn't leave until almost 11 a.m. We encountered many manatee zones that really slowed us down so when I could I pushed upwards of 2100 RPM which with the tide got us over 11 MPH which helped. We entered the Okeechobee Waterway at 5:00 with nearly 10 miles to go and almost immediately entered one of the longest slow zones so far. We got to Legacy Marina (N 26 38.540 W 81 52.568) at 6:15 in the dark. As we were approaching the auto pilot went goofy and the starboard engine over reved so we had to convert to the conventional balancing of the engines for the last mile. Maybe it got tired from all the fast moving today. We plan to be here for 3 nights then start our southward voyage again.