Steve studying charts for gulf crossing to Sarasota.

Sarasota Anchorage

nice sunset 🙂

looks like a nuclear bomb!

Another sunset pic.

Rudely awakened in by  the marina personnel stating “Hey anyone awake on board?” and rapping loudly on the side of the boat. Steve jumped up and i heard the guy say we were too close to their mooring field and we had an hour to leave before the Marine police arrived. Wow Sarasota we are out of here! Could it have been my memory foam and rug hanging over the side to dry that made our boat too unsightly to be in the marina? LOL No they went to the sailboat next to us and stated the same thing. It is allowable to anchor there but they thought we were too close and they dont get paid for anchorages not on a mooring ball. It costs 20 dollars a night to hook on to a mooring ball and 24.50 per ft to stay in their marina. No thanks we are on our way to Venice. It is very pretty scenery down the waterway and we loved it. Getting to Venice we attempted to anchor out with the help of a yacht club member who directed us to a spot. It was shallow we got stuck going into the North side anchorages and barely made it into the south side anchorages (which if we had read our skipper Bob manual it would have said not to anchor on southside due to tides. Well Steve and i got anchored out and went into town to mail our auto pilot wheel drive to Raymarine. We dinghied over to the dock tied up and checked out “bathrooms” they were public park restrooms small no shower. We walked 2 or 3 miles to post office through a neat community and tried to find a box for our part. Wouldn’t you know it they have a box too small and the next one up was too big. USPS. We waited on a call from the person at Raymarine but had to go ahead and send the package anyway it was getting late. Steve asked me if i had seen the Quilt Basket on the way in and took me over to it on the way back. It was a small shop with some great fabrics on the town square. Well after that we walked down to city hall to find out about some activities in the area and see if they had scuba tours. That was the closest thing to a welcome center in Venice. Did not find anything and walked on to the beach and a squirrel started to stalk us i think he thinks we has food. They are so tame there. At the beach we found some lifeguards who told us of a scuba boat. The beach with the sharks teeth was 2-3 miles away. we saw a ton of dead fish and learned it was the red tide. It is phytoplankton the takes on a red or green/brown color in ocean and causes a high  morbidity in some marine animals esp fish and causes humans allergy like effects. We walked the beach back to a park that had a place to wash our feet off from the beach and we took pictures by a wooden dolphin. Talked to a couple fisherman at the park and watched a sailboat come by us. NICE! We walked over to crows nest marina and got rates for a week, then decided to head back to boat for tuna and pickles. Stopped at the dock to talk to a man with a boat from the 70S called Lone Wolf. Very nice sailboat ketch he is also headed to keys and bahamas, maybe we will see him there. At the boat we discovered we could not move the boat due to getting stuck in every direction and slammed into something underwater with our keel. :-(( We had to wait until high tide to get out and that was at 1:45 AM. so we woke up and got our boat back into channel and went back to sleep.