Old Bridge Village to Tampa Bay

     Back in October of 2020 former Yahoo group moderator and one of the organizers of  a 2014 Bradenton Rossi Rendezvous Jacquie Frances announced that she and Happy and Mark Jordan were planning a Rendezvous at Caladesi State park in March of 2021.

    At this point the pandemic was still in full swing masks and social distancing the standard behavior. In December 2020 the first person receives a covid 19 vaccine.  At this point, I did not think that I would be attending.  By the end of January with many 65 and older getting vaccines and an old Army buddy of mine coming to visit, I had reserved a slip. Wendy did not want to go, but Phil couldn't wait to get on the water.

    On March 16th Phil and I set out on the first leg of our 300 mile round trip. Our first stop is one of my favorites, Cayo Costa state park. Pelican Bay is located in between Cayo Costa Island and Punta Blanca Island. It has beautiful scenery and is an excellent anchorage.

We had great weather traveling the 40 miles to Cayo Costa. After we set the anchor and launched the dinghy we spent 2 days enjoying the scenery and fishing. Mostly we caught Hard head catfish.

The weather remained great while we stayed.

Sunset the first night on the hook at Cayo Costa.

After two days we weighed anchor and headed north. The water around Venice was an amazing turquoise green. 

Our next stop was a small anchorage between Bird and Lido keys just south of Sarasota. The wind had picked up substantially and we were very happy to be well shielded from it. The sailboat anchored near us had a wind turbine on its mast and it was howling from the wind. We felt nothing down at our level.

The next day as we headed through Sarasota Bay we had 2-4 foot seas, mostly heading right into it so nothing a Rossi can't handle. 

From there we headed out through Anna Maria towards Tampa Bay and the mouth of the Manatee river. We were headed to a recommended anchorage  near the mouth of the Manatee river. As we were heading north the seas became more and more rough. As we were following the markers it soon became apparent that as soon as I turned east that I would have 4-6 foot beam seas trying to get to the anchorage. Following a couple of larger boats I made the turn and almost immediately turned around. The huge following seas weren't much less scary than the beam seas. We were happy when we pulled into Bradenton Beach Marina. We topped off the tanks and got a slip for the night. We went to Anna Maria Oyster house for a tasty dinner.  The following day Smitten caught up with us, so we decided to do the Tampa Bay crossing together.  The 20th was a much more dreary looking day and the wind was again from the north. The seas were down to 3-5 and the breakers much more visible. Since we were essentially cruising directly into the chop we thought we should be fine.

By the time we were starting to get into more protected waters at the North end of the Sunshine Skyway bridge, I heard some banging on the roof. The next thing I know Phil yells the dinghy is loose. So now I am trying to pilot a boat through chop with 160 pounds of dinghy and motor swinging around. I let Sid on Smitten know and we worked our way out of the channel.  I climbed up on the roof and tried to wrestle the dingy back on top. Sid was motoring in a circle around me, as I was getting blown back into the channel and he was trying to slow down boats that were coming around the corner under the bridge. I eventually got it back in place and lashed to the rails. I learned an important lesson, never trust hooks on the rails, they can pop off. After all the excitement, we continued on our way to Caladesi.