2-13 to 2-15 Anclote Key to Manatee River near Bradenton FL.

We decided to travel the intracoastal waterway (ICW) route, mostly because we thought it would be more interesting. This way (also called the “inside” route) there are tons of bridges and fortunately we are able to fit under almost all of them so we don’t have to wait for them to open. If we did this route would take forever. The waterways are now starting to look more like I had always pictured Florida. Building after building, more crowded, more aggressive boaters. We saw a shark attacking something in Clearwater Bay which kind of gave us the creeps.

Tampa Bay is so big that only sections of it are shown on a page of the charts and it is difficult to tell which way goes into the bay and which way is the ICW. After being frustrated that I couldn’t figure it out Dave stopped the boat in a huff in the middle of the bay and had a look himself. He didn’t get it either. A friendly fisherman pulled up to us and asked if we were okay, and then promptly instructed us to go in what turned out to be the wrong direction. Fortunately we figured that out pretty quickly and only had a minor detour. Plus I was vindicated.

We anchored at De Soto Point in the Manatee River. Saturday morning was beautiful so we took the dinghy down to explore the river. Plus the diet coke supply was dangerously low. We pulled into a marina and set out to find diet coke. After about a 2 mile walk we finally found some, and loaded down with 4 12 packs of soda and an 18 pack of beer we headed back to the dinghy. It was a very long walk back as you can probably imagine. The guy at the store thought we were nuts. We wound up having to stop almost every block to rest our hands and re-adjust the cartons. At one point we were resting on a bench at an intersection, hot, sweaty, sore and surrounded by beverages. We looked at each other and had to laugh: the glamorous cruising life! After that we treated ourselves to a delicious Valentine’s lunch at a restaurant near the marina.

On Sunday we pulled up the anchor and went back to the marina to pump out and fill up with water. We thought we would head out to Venice after that, but Dave wasn’t feeling well so we went back to our anchorage and he rested for most of the day.

Later on he started to feel better and we took the dinghy down and putted over to DeSoto Park that we were anchored near. This is supposedly the spot where DeSoto landed in the 1500's.

Much to Dave's humiliation I insisted on taking a photo of him with the explorers.





And he reciprocated.