Today was a rainy day. Since it wasn't stormy, we decided to proceed
down the ICW. It was interesting to look
at the homes and towns along the way.
Sarasota and Venice look like places we would like to explore. It did
rain off and on, but winds weren't bad.
The most fun we had today was
with the bridge tenders. We followed
another sailboat for quite a ways today.
We arrived at the bridge at Siesta Key in Sarasota right behind
them. The bridge opened every 20
minutes, so we both waited. Well, a
little power boat came up beside us and stopped to wait, too. They were actually in our way, because both
of us were trying to zig zag in front of the bridge while we were waiting. We can't go off of the channel because of our
depth. When the bridge opened, the
little boat started through, then the other sailboat told us to go, because
they were stopping on the other side. As
we went through, I could hear the bridge tender on a loud speaker telling the
little boat how they were blocking our way and should have gone through
earlier. Then he said "Luck of a
Fool, you just witnessed an example of the name of your boat with the boat just in front of you." We decided to call him Looks like a Fool. He did let us pass and apologized to us.
See the shallow strip of land along side the channel with birds standing on it?
Later at Stickney Point
bridge, I saw two people jogging across the bridge. Just as they reached the tenders tower, he
blew the horn to stop traffic. It must
have been pretty loud to the joggers.
They jumped, then stopped to see if they did something to cause the horn
blast. Then I saw them point at us and
laugh and take off jogging again. It was
pretty funny to witness and I can imagine how that horn made them jump. It's pretty loud to us out on the water.
At the Blackburn Bridge, we
requested the bridge to be opened. The
bridge tender said he would have to flip a coin to see if he'd open it or
not. Then he came back over the radio
and asked if we wanted heads or tails.
Dave called heads and luckily we won the toss :) This one was a swing bridge. So the bridge tender had to walk out to the
middle of the bridge and switch something for the bridge to swing open.
There have been times when we have had to wait in traffic for bridges
that open. It's pretty cool being the
ones in the boat. Everyone watches you
go by and waves.
The last section of the ICW
was really narrow. So we had to motor
past sunset to get to a bay where we could anchor for the night. The channel is maintained at about 12 feet
between the markers, but the sides get pretty shallow. We were listening to the Packers game starting
at 4:30. Dave found the game on his ipad
with Tune in application. Then we hooked
it to the stereo system inside the boat so it would come out of the speakers in
our cockpit. The controls for the volume
were then inside, too.
Well, when we decided to
anchor at 6:30, first of all, it is dark, which makes it hard for me to see
Dave's hand signals. Then we had the
ball game on which made it hard for me to hear him. It's a good thing there weren't other boats
near us, because we had to shout back and forth to each other. Hence the name "Luck of a
Fool". But we were successful. We do have headsets to talk to each other, but they are in our "garage" (the aft cabin).
Dave made two awesome meals
today with leftovers. First, for brunch,
he took leftover French toast and put slices of apples and a dollop of cream cheese on each piece. Then for dinner, we had a leftover steak cut
up into pieces in the leftover mushroom gravy.
He made rice and added fresh coconut (thanks to Colleen Schneider) and
the juice of a lime. We put the steak
over the rice and it was awesome. I made
us turkey sandwiches for lunch and feel pretty lame. But I did invent a great way to eat
Cheetos. I filled an empty peanut jar
and we would shake the Cheetos into our mouth, not having to get the cheese on
your fingers. Pretty clever!
The Packers won the NFC North
championship game!! Yeah!!
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