Single point of failure

We are underway eastbound across Lake Okeechobee, bound for the dolphins in Port Mayaca. We're pressing through on a long day, with the navigation depth in the lake just 6.39' and going down about a half inch each day. The sounder has already registered 6.3', or just four inches between our skeg and the bedrock lake bottom.

Tuesday we weighed anchor at Bird Key and headed back to the ICW. It would have been a nice day to run outside, but we can not get out at Big Sarasota Pass. I was off on my timing by a few minutes and we had to run hard for a bit to make the first timed bridge before settling into a more relaxed pace.  We passed Venice without stopping, continuing on the inside with over a foot of tidal help to get us past the notorious shallow sections.

An ignoble end to this little Nordic Tug, sunk in the Englewood anchorage.

We contemplated stopping at a familiar anchorage in Englewood, where we can get ashore and have a choice of dining options which have reopened since the storms. But it was early in the afternoon, and we could see the anchorage peppered with sunken vessels; an excavator nearby on a spud barge told the tale. We opted to press on.

Instead we stopped at another familiar anchorage, which we have not used in many years, in a "lollipop" off the channel in Cape Haze (map). We had it to ourselves. Sadly, the casual Italian place with draft beer right next door to the Publix ashore folded a year or so ago, replaced by a sushi place of unknown quality. We instead tendered ashore at the bridge abutment on the canal and walked 3/4 mile in the other direction to a more upscale Italian place, Apulia Osteria Italiana. It was quite good but we thought it expensive for the neighborhood. That precluded a Publix stop, which was the other direction.

Flux tied up at the bridge abutment in Cape Haze. That concrete looks horizontal here but it's a 40° slope.

Wednesday morning I ruminated about going back ashore for a quick Publix run, as we were shortly going to need milk and lunch fixings, and I would also stop at the gas station next door to get fuel for the tender. But we decided we would be stopping in LaBelle on the way to the lake in just a couple of days, and we would just get it all there. We decked the tender and weighed anchor to make the 9:30 opening at the Boca Grande causeway.

We were hoping, on this pass, to finally make it up Charlotte Harbor to Punta Gorda, spend a couple of nights, and see some friends. But the closest we can get to Punta Gorda is to anchor 3/4 mile offshore in the middle of the bay, and the forecast was not great for a comfortable stay or for a dry tender ride. When we reached the turn for the bay, winds were already ten knots above that forecast, and we waved it off yet again.

We looked ahead for another stop, and settled on Glover Bight in Cape Coral, where the restaurant courtesy docks have reopened. I had already told friends Gayle and Bill we might be headed for Punta Gorda, where they live when not sailing their catamaran, and I had to tell them we were waving off due to weather. At that point, they suggested they could drive over and meet us instead.

Sunset from our anchorage in Cape Haze.

Cape Coral is a longer drive for them than Fort Myers, and after looking at the chart, we decided we could press on to Fort Myers instead. We dropped the hook in our usual spot (map), and tendered over to the North Fort Myers side, landing at the courtesy docks for the Three Fishermen Seafood Restaurant, adjacent to the Best Western. Bill and Gayle met us there and we had a very nice time catching up with them. The food was also quite good, and we made a note of the place for the next time it's too rough to get ashore on the Fort Myers side.

On our way to Fort Myers I made plans to meet up with friends Brent and Sarah just a few miles upriver on our way out of town. They've offered us the use of their dock behind their house, but I did not want to be navigating a tight, shallow, unfamiliar canal for just a quick visit while we're rushing to make the lake. Instead I suggested we meet up at the nearby Boathouse Tiki Bar and Grill, where we could tender in after dropping the hook across the river.

Sarah was unavailable all afternoon and evening, and so we agreed on a lunch visit, which was perfect timing for us to just drop a lunch hook and then continue upriver to LaBelle, where I needed to run ashore for provisions and fuel. And so it was that we weighed anchor at 9:30, with just enough tide to leave the anchorage, for the eight mile run to the Boathouse at the Wilson Pigott Bridge.

Our friend Ben, editor of Panbo, was out on the water testing equipment when he spotted us passing Glover Bight. Photo: Ben Stein

Louise had reported on our way to Fort Myers that the stabilizer temperature had been creeping up above normal. I inspected the system and found no issues at the time. But just a couple of miles out of Fort Myers, on her first engine room check at the 20-minute mark, she came up to report the stabilizer reservoir temperature was through the roof and she could smell something burnt. A short time later, the stabilizer control went into overheat alarm and centered the fins. A quick check revealed that no cooling water was coming out of the stabilizer cooling overboard discharge.

Further checks revealed the transmission temperature was also climbing well above normal, and I could see the engine temperature rising on my gauge. We were in a narrow part of the river with no good place to stop. A check of the engine exhaust showed that it was getting water, but at a significantly below-normal flow.

We quickly assessed our options: turn around and run what was now over three miles back to Fort Myers, or limp along a little less than five miles further to our planned stop just the other side of the Pigott Bridge. While the U-turn was shorter, the choice was clear: ahead of us were friends with a dock and a car, as well as the Hinkley boatyard, which could not haul us but at least had mechanics. Whereas behind us in Fort Myers was not even a working marina nor a good place to land the tender in all conditions.

Near Venice we were passed by this ice cream boat, the on-water version of the Good Humor truck.

The stabilizers make heat even when they are just centered, so my next order of business was to go down and pin them so we could shut them down. That's a fiddly process involving loosening set screws and finessing the feedback potentiometers to line the pin holes up, which I did while Louise took the helm. We cut power to the system as soon as the pins were in. Louise increased her ER checks to once every fifteen minutes, and we made the rest of the trip at 1300 RPM, or half of redline.

The climbing temperatures, low engine water flow, and missing stabilizer flow all pointed to a water flow problem, which meant either a failing impeller, or a clogged sea strainer. If the impeller was starting to fail, then stopping and restarting the engine for any reason would make it worse, as would large throttle inputs such as I need for docking, or station-keeping at bridges.

The safe anchorage was on the other side of the Wilson Pigott Bridge, and about ten minutes out I radioed the bridge tender and told her I had an emergency, with limited ability to station-keep, and that I would need the bridge open on arrival (bridge tenders in Florida have a bad habit of making you come right up to the bridge before lowering the traffic gates to start the opening). To her credit she started early and had the bridge open for us when we arrived. We pulled through, made a left, and dropped the hook just outside the cable area (map).

Sarah, Brent, Mary Grace, and us, at Boathouse Tiki Bar.

I opened the ER outside hatch and left the fan running, and we splashed the tender and headed ashore. It was great meeting up with Sarah, Brent, and their daughter Mary Grace over lunch. The food was also decent and they had much-needed cold draft beer. With outside temps near 90°, the swimming pool looked mighty inviting, too, but I had lots of work ahead of me and we tendered straight home after saying our goodbyes. They, of course, once again offered their dock or anything else we might need to work through the issues.

The mud in the river here is very soft, and we had anchored on fairly short scope due to surrounding pot floats and the shallow edge of the river. We returned to find Vector moving ever so slowly through the mud, and decided we needed to pay out more scope. We dragged one of the pots a little further away from Vector with the dinghy, and then I used the dinghy to push Vector forward against the current while Louise retrieved the snubber to pay out more chain.

When we arrived I had hoped to wait for things to cool down a bit before diving into repairs, but with the tenuous holding situation I decided to start straight away. We started the generator to get the air conditioning running to cool down the house in the 90° heat, and I set up a box fan to blow some of that cool air into the ER.

I seldom stop for progress photos in the heat of battle. Else I would have shot the heat exchanger, or the strainer enclosures. But I have this one of the intact impeller, because I can't get my eye next to it, so I need to use mirrors and cameras to see it.

I got the cover off the water pump and found the impeller completely intact. This was actually a bit disappointing, because it was the most likely cause and also nearly the simplest to fix. I put the pump back together and was about to start on the sea strainer, which almost never has anything in it, when the air conditioning quit. High pressure alarms on all the units meant that this, too, was not getting cooling water. Sure enough, a check of the overboard discharge revealed no flow, and even the generator flow was weak, with the generator temperature slowly rising.

This was revealing. The main engine has its own pump and strainer, and the generator and AC each have their own pumps, but share a strainer. There is nothing in common among all of these except the sea chest.  Occam's razor suggested that we had some kind of obstruction in the sea chest, and so Louise called the nearby Hinkley yard to see if they had a diver while I continued through the motions of ruling everything else out.

I found both sea strainers, normally nearly empty, packed with crud. But even after emptying both, cleaning them out thoroughly, and reinstalling, we still had no stabilizer water flow from the main engine, nor any main air conditioning on the generator. The generator would run, but we could see the exhaust water was inadequate, and the coolant temperature climbed to 200°. Still, we were getting charge into the batteries and were able to run the pilothouse air conditioner, making the upstairs livable.

Main engine strainer, packed with vegetation. Louise shot this for a Whatsapp thread.

On the chance that any debris made it through the strainer, I opened up the main engine heat exchanger and cleaned it out. This is a fiddly process that first involves disconnecting the alternator and removing its cables, but I felt it was a necessary step. I found no problems even when rodding out a couple dozen of the tubes, of which there are probably a hundred.

By this time we were now 100% certain we had obstructions in the sea chest, and I started looking for other divers, since Hinkley never called us back. I got recommendations from Brent and from local friend Ben and eventually found a guy who said he could come out some time in the morning. I buttoned everything up and we tendered back to The Boathouse at dinner time for another beer and a light snack.

The tide had been coming in all day, since we first left Fort Myers, but after dinner it started to go out, adding to the river current. We again found ourselves pulling the anchor ever so slowly through the mud, and we knew we'd have a sleepless night unless we put out more chain. This time it meant starting the engine and moving upriver a bit, but with the impeller already checked and not enough time for the engine to even get hot, it was not an issue. We ended up sitting in exactly the same place, but with another 50' of chain on the bottom.

The generator/AC strainer was worse. In the bucket is the stuff that was above the basket that I had to remove by hand. It smelled as bad as it looks, too.

We then had a comfortable night, although I will say the Wilson Pigott Bridge is about the noisiest bridge we've ever heard. It's busy, and the grid deck must have enough loose parts that there is a mighty rattle with every passing vehicle. If we ever stop here again for a visit or to eat at the restaurant, we'll anchor a bit further upriver.

We'd been running the pilothouse air conditioning, which can run on the inverter and does not use seawater cooling, on and off all day in the heat, and we had a nervous couple of hours running the generator with marginal cooling to recharge the batteries for the night. The temperature held, hovering at 200°, which is below the shutdown threshold, and the exhaust gas that is normally mitigated by water was terrible, but we made it through.

It had never really occurred to me before, but we now know that the sea chest is a single point of failure. I've always had confidence that we could make power, however inefficiently, with the main engine should the generator fail, and vice-versa, with completely separate controls, wiring, plumbing, etc.. Oh, sure, our single engine is also a single point of failure, but apart from it quitting at inopportune moments, we never really need to be underway But we faced the real possibility here that we would be without battery power, without an ability to recharge or to safely move to a dock with a power outlet.

A Facebook follower snapped this as we approached the Miserable Mile. Photo: Jill Abramson 

Everything from the ability to restart engines, to the navigation equipment, to the refrigerator full of a household's worth of food depends on that power. We can wait indefinitely for engine repairs, but not for electricity. I'm not a big fan of those little suitcase generators, but this has me thinking about them. Or perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and put some solar panels over the soft top.

The generator again held for an hour in the morning to tide us over until the diver arrived, which was around 10:20. I tendered over to the restaurant docks to pick him up. He got right to work, going down with calipers to measure the sea chest cover bolts. I handed him one of my box-end wrenches, and he spent maybe fifteen minutes down there removing a ton of debris. He told us there was a "birds nest" at each of the intake pipes leading off the sea chest.

In ten years and 54,000 nautical miles, this is the first time this has ever happened. Normally the sea chest intake grate keeps all the big debris out, and we seldom even have any material in the sea strainers. The only explanation I could come up with is that, in one of our shallow anchorages, we must have rested up against a submerged bush or tree right on the sea chest, and the suction of the generator and air conditioner pumps, or maybe even the main engine pump when we started up, sucked enough of it through the grate to fill the whole sea chest and occlude the inlets.

This may look like a cloud at first glance, but it is smoke from a sugar cane burn. Glad to have this behind us now.

I had asked the diver in Key West who had cleaned our hull to inspect the sea chest through the grate, and he reported it clear. And nothing was overheating until a couple of days ago. So this likely happened somewhere between St. Pete and Fort Myers.

Because I know someone will ask, we do have our own dive equipment on board, including a hookah rig that I made expressly for the purpose of taking care of underwater maintenance in remote places. And had we been completely on our own, I could have gone under the boat to do this myself. I might even have done so just for experience had it happened in warm, clear waters such as the Keys. But I'm a recreational diver, just barely on top of controlling my breathing and buoyancy, and working in murky water and strong current, fumbling with tools, is really more appropriately handled by a professional diver used to those conditions and tasks. Not to mention the alligators.

Everything worked straight away once the sea chest was back together, and after dropping the diver off at the dock we got underway right at lunch time. The tiki place was already in full swing. But at 11:45, we were really too late to make Moore Haven by the end of the day. We blasted right past LaBelle, which had been our planned provision stop. I did, at least, fuel the tender at Hinkley before we left.

Our coffee view this morning. Yes we are that close to the dam.

Franklin lock, with its busted gates, was painfully slow, and I had to stay on the gas the rest of the day to make the last lockage at Ortona Lock. We dropped the hook in the upper pool just upriver of the dam (map). We splashed the tender and made our way down the secret canal to the Ortona Tavern, which was the Shady Gator the last time we were there. The food was good, they had cold beer in bottles, and we mostly had the place to ourselves, even on a Friday night. They gave us a couple of coffee creamers since we were never able to pick up milk.

The game shelf at Ortona Tavern. We both cracked up over "LaBelle-opoly."

We got an early start this morning so we could get all the way across the lake and still make the last lockage at Port Mayaca. As we were having our coffee the lock passed through 11 bass boats upbound, we presume for some bass fishing tournament in the lake. On a pleasant Saturday we expected the lake and the rim canal to be chock-a-block with them, but honestly the traffic has been light. Maybe the 20-25 knot winds on the lake kept some folks away.

Update: As usual I could not finish under way and we are now anchored just upriver of the railroad lift bridge in Port Mayaca (map). This is a new spot for us; we expected to tie to the dolphins, but the canal has dropped with the lake to the point where there is barely six feet of water there, and the aforementioned wind made tying up a challenge. After three missed approaches we waved off and came here instead, a spot where we simply would not fit at higher water levels.

We bashed through three-footers on the beam through the second half of the lake, but we're very glad to have the lake and its shallow spots behind us. Louise made Cajun pasta for dinner, which we had with some delicious homemade sourdough gifted to us by Karen when we saw them a couple of weeks ago -- it does really well in the freezer.

Homemade sourdough with dinner. Thanks, Karen.

In the morning we will continue downriver to Stuart, where we hope to rest and recuperate a couple of days after the big push to beat the falling lake level. I need to line up some yard work, and we need to start making our way out of Florida. Barring more boat drama, my next post will be somewhere on our northbound journey up the east coast.

Bonus photo: tonight's anchorage. Yes, we are that close to the rip-rap.

St. Pete-Clearwater meetups

We are underway southbound in Tampa Bay, approaching the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as I begin typing, after a couple of very pleasant weeks in the St Petersburg/Clearwater area. We're headed for the Gulf ICW and the southbound run back to Sanibel Island, where we will have to choose between the lake and Keys routes back to the east coast.

I'm a lucky guy. Flanked by Karen and Louise at the Clearwater mural. Photo: Ben Willmore, Digital Mastery

Shortly after my last post we arrived to the Pass-a-Grille inlet, where we found depths over the bar of just 7.9' at a tide of 1.1'. We made our way to a new spot for us, an anchorage in a small embayment near Isla del Sol (map), which we entered from the northwest. We tendered over to the Tierra Verde dry stack marina, across the channel, heavily damaged in the storms. They let us tie up to go eat in the on-premise Italian restaurant, Circo, which was quite good.

Sunset over Pass-a-Grille from the Isla del Sol anchorage.

After dinner we strolled the island a bit, passing the well-protected Port 32 marina, which is a longer tender ride but also has an on-site restaurant. I stayed up late for the lunar eclipse; I tried to get a photo but my phone was not up to the challenge. In the morning we waited until 10:30 to leave so we would have plenty of tide for the shallow spot, where on this pass we found 8.9' on a tide of 0.9'. We can only guess that high offshore winds had lowered the gulf side water level by more than a foot on our way in.

Best my phone could do with the lunar eclipse.

The run to Clearwater inlet was flat calm, and I only had to dodge and weave a little traffic on the way into the harbor. We arrived at the dock, spun around into the current, and tied up on the face dock, girding ourselves for the inevitable slop that makes its way down the channel there. No sooner did we have all the lines on than Shannon, the very pleasant dockmaster, offered us a more protected spot around the corner on the perpendicular face dock almost under the bridge (map). It was a bit tricky getting the boat in there in the cross-current, but we knew it would be more comfortable.

Vector at Clearwater Harbor Marina, as seen from the city pier (remnant of old drawbridge).

In the evening we strolled through the fancy new Coachman Park, under construction on our last visit, to downtown Clearwater, where we met up with Karen and Ben for a nice dinner at Olive & Thyme. After walking Louise back to Vector, I set out on foot to collect an Amazon package from the nearby locker and then walk the mile or so to the UPS Access Point in the CVS for yet more packages. When I arrived back at the dock the current had reversed, and it was pushing Vector so far off the dock I could not re-board. I ended up handing the pack off to Louise and then doing an assisted tight-rope walk on a dock line to get aboard until we could tighten all the lines on the next ebb.

Being nearly directly under the bridge wreaked havoc with our Starlink as well as our GPS. That big red blotch is all position error.

The signature feature of Coachman Park is the Baycare Sound amphitheater. When I watched it going up I imagined it as a local civic event center, but it gets the headliners, and Saturday we were bombarded with sound checks for the evening's Foreigner concert, fronted by 38 Special. In the afternoon we put the scooters on the ground and made a run to Publix before heading off to Ben and Karen's place for a wonderful homemade seafood pasta dinner. We returned to the waterfront right at intermission; having missed 38 Special we got to hear all the top Foreigner hits, just a bit muted, right from Vector. It was over by 10:45.

Baycare Sound from our deck, in the rain. Getting ready for Diana Ross.

Sunday an enormous storm blew through, complete with tornado warnings, pinning us on the boat most of the day. A gap in the rain let us get out for dinner in the evening, but just ahead of a Diana Ross concert in the amphitheater, every downtown restaurant was packed, with waits of a half hour or longer. I walked down the block until I found a joint with open tables, a sports bar called Prelude that had just been open a few weeks. The food and service were good, but the place had a faint smell of old cigarette smoke, most likely left over from whatever had been there before. We won't be back unless it is pleasant enough to eat outside.

The storm drains on the bridge just dump straight down, making this pattern on the water.

The Diana Ross fans got a reprieve, with the rain completely gone by the time we finished dinner, and the concert delayed by just a half hour to mop things up. I walked around the venue and spent a little time listening to her -- she's still got it after all these years. (Foreigner's lone original member is the same age, 80.) Tickets are expensive and there are lots of rules in the venue, but if you don't mind your view being obstructed by a mesh fence, there's a place in the park to bring your folding chair and hear the whole thing for free.

The view from the cheap seats. That's Diana Ross. I had to stand on my toes to see over the fence.

On the way to dinner Saturday I had noticed the fancy LED position light on the front of Louise's new scooter was flashing. We got some masking tape from Ben to cover it for the ride home, but Sunday I tore into the fairing to either fix it or disconnect it. I ended up doing the latter until I can work on it closer to the boat.

On St. Patrick's eve, our friend and professional musician Dave Rowe streamed an Irish-themed concert and we were happy to "attend," stout in hand.

The rest of the week was fairly quiet, and in addition to knocking out a few projects, we got lots of errands done. We both had doctor's appointments, and we hit all the shopping that often requires wheels, including Total Wine, Walmart, and Costco. At this latter stop I found a deal on a tablet to replace the one Louise has been using for charts underway, which has slowed to an absolute crawl. I had several walks to the Amazon locker throughout the week.

Storms blow a lot of debris around and after the first big blow I found this play ball wedged under our lines. I cleaned it up and left it in the very nice modern playground at the adjacent park, and I was happy to see children playing with it the next few days.

We hit two more downtown restaurants, including perennial favorite Clear Sky, which we all hit on St. Pats, and Downtown Pizza on our final night. We met Karen, after Ben left town on business, at the Brew Garden Taphouse, where a pizza on the menu is named for her, and she fed us at home on her last night in town.

Roseate spoonbill feeding in the shallows under the bridge, not far from Vector.

I had originally booked six nights, with our departure coinciding with Karen leaving town, however shortly after arriving I learned that the week rate was actually cheaper, and so we extended one night and got a partial refund, reminding me to always check on such things. That let us get the scooters back on deck at our leisure rather than on departure morning. It was a great stay in Clearwater, however the new park has eliminated the free parking near the waterfront. We got parking tickets on the scooters for locking them to a bike rack before I found a more legal place for them overnight, in the old city hall lot.

The storm took out the northern access to the courtesy dock, which we used so often on our last visit.

On Friday we were all set to leave at 9:45 to time the drawbridges on the southbound run, but it was blowing 25-30 knots and the wind had us pinned to the dock, even as the current was trying to push us the other way. With boat-eating metal parts protruding from the dock both ahead and astern of us, I could not afford to be blown back on a failed attempt, and we waved off after ten minutes of trying.

Departure time. 25-30kt on the starboard beam, pinning us to the dock.

We tried again at 10:45, with the same result, and we finally made it off the dock at 11:45. That put us in a fair tide and we reached the first bridge a half hour early, which had me scrambling to make the next bridge in half an hour rather than the planned 40 minutes. When we left two hours late I though we would not make St. Pete before closing, but we made up an hour and were pulling up to the yacht club docks (map) at 4:30.

Theses pilings precluded "hopping" along the face of the dock to open water. We were nestled between two of them.

The St. Pete yacht club has completely replaced their docks since our last visit, and these are nice sturdy concrete floating docks, a real luxury here. We were again able to offload the scooters the next day and stash them in the club garage.

A view inside Baycare Sound on a quiet day.

We had a whirlwind week catching up with friends, including Alex, Dori and Bob, Diane and JP, and Steph and Martin, who fed us at their house twice. We also hit familiar downtown restaurants including Bella Brava and Red Mesa, which seems to have declined a bit since our last visit. We had dinner for the first time ever at Grille 1909 in the club, which we've always enjoyed at breakfast or lunch, but have now decided that the lounge is probably a better dinner option. I also got a pizza one night from Oak & Stone, when Louise was suffering a particularly bad allergy day.

In our cheapy folding chairs waiting for the show Hair to start.

Our first night at the dock I noticed moving theatrical lighting on booms at the park across the way, but the concert music I expected to go along with that never came. The next day I wandered over to discover it was the setup for a theater-in-the-park production of Hair, and that must have been one of the final lighting setup nights. The next couple of days we could hear rehearsals. We would still be at the docks when the show opened in previews, and I bought BYO-chair seating for the first night. The music and voices were fantastic and it was a great production. The nude scene and some of the more violent parts were omitted, but overall a great show, provided you understand that the whole show is basically a 1968 acid trip.

The set at intermission. Photos are not allowed during the performance.

When we had booked, the club could only take us at the dock until Friday morning, in part because lots of boats were coming in for the big Key West themed street party along with the grand opening celebration for the new docks, as well as the annual blessing of the fleet scheduled for today. And so Friday morning we topped up the water, offloaded the trash, and boarded the scooters before checkout time, figuring to anchor someplace for a couple of nights.

St. Pete from atop the St. Pete Pier building.

Just as we were getting ready to single up lines, the dockmaster came over to say they could accommodate us longer if we could just move forward a couple dozen feet. Given the chaos of the weekend we were not really surprised that things had changed, and we were happy to just line forward and move our power plug to extend our stay by another two nights.

I was up on deck to catch what I thought would be the tail end of a sunrise solar eclipse, but the eclipse ended just moments before sunrise. We needed to be on the east coast to catch it. So you just get a sunrise photo instead.

That meant we could go to the big block party, and the club was able to give us last-minute tickets. It was a great event with a fantastic band playing all the hits of our younger years, with a great food spread and free-flowing beer and wine to boot. We sat with friends Steph, Dori, and Martin and met a bunch of other club members as well. We have not danced that much in a long time, and we were a bit sore the next day.

Martin, Steph, Dori, Louise, and I at the Key West block party. The hat was my nod to the theme.

That did not stop us from strolling the weekly Saturday Market, where we picked up some excellent breakfast sandwiches from Kurt's Sausages. We also found a couple of bagels for the next day, but they were nothing to cheer about.

St. Pete Saturday Market. One aisle of four.

The final extra day also let us get in one last visit with Karen and Ben, who were driving home from a conference in Bradenton Saturday evening. We ended up at Taverna Costale, an Italian place, new to us, just a couple of blocks from the dock, simply because they had available spots on Open Table. It was actually very good.

Dinner with Karen and Ben at Taverna Costale. Photo: Ben Willmore

This morning we were ready to leave the dock before checkout time, but we delayed for a bit while the gaggle of boats participating in the blessing of the fleet jockeyed around and left the marina for the blessing out near the St. Pete Pier. We proceeded directly to the pump-out dock across the basin at the municipal marina, and I had figured the blessing would be done by the time we left the basin. No such luck, and I had to skirt around it on our way out.

The blessing of the fleet. I left this official boat to port so I would not pass between them and their congregants and be a distraction. They still all turned to look at us.

Update: I was never able to finish yesterday, with just a couple of hours underway in open water, and we're now in Sarasota, anchored off Bird Key across from the Sarasota Yacht Club (map). We had the current against us all the way through Tampa Bay but still arrived a bit early for the Anna Maria Island drawbridge. Then we slow-rolled to the Cortez bridge, just 16 minutes away but also on a half-hourly schedule. By then it was 3pm and we just went another mile to a familiar anchorage near the Coast Guard station in Cortez (map).

Approaching the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We do not use the main span and instead thread between the anti-ship caissons.

Cortez and Bradenton Beach were hit pretty hard by Milton, and the marina north of the bridge is pretty much destroyed, with sunken vessels still in place. We also noticed the anchorage south of the bridge on the west side, normally so full there's no room left, had just three boats, the rest, we presume, relocated by the storm.

Destroyed marina and lots of sunken boats on our way into Cortez.

At dinner time we splashed the tender and headed over to the Tide Tables restaurant on the Cortez side, which has a dock. I was looking forward to strolling Cortez after dinner, but the wait turned out to be over 40 minutes, with no shady place to wait. We decided to leave it for another day, waved off, and headed across to the Bradenton Beach side instead.

Long overdue project to refresh the dinghy numbers. Halfway through on this side.

The city courtesy docks were mostly destroyed, but there are two mostly usable slips and they were empty. We tied up and walked down to the Bridge Tender Inn, which we remembered fondly from a previous visit. It's a Packers bar (really), and last time we were there ahead of a Packers game, which made it a zoo. Thankfully, pro football season is over. My burger was excellent and Louise enjoyed her fish sandwich, and only draft beer was lacking. We strolled a bit of the town after dinner; lots of damage and many things are still closed. Several restaurants have reopened and the town is rebuilding.

Courtesy docks askew.

This morning I called the Sarasota Yacht Club, just a little over two hours away, to see if they had a slip for tonight, and they did. So we weighed anchor after the fog lifted and headed south, for an arrival a bit after noon. That put us here at max flood, with a full knot ripping through the marina and trying to push us into the slips, which fortunately are parallel to the flow. But with the heavy current and 15 knots of wind on the beam pushing us off-center, we waved off after three missed approaches. The slips are tight. Instead we came across the channel to this lovely anchorage.

One of many shuttered businesses in Bradenton Beach. The water came right through.

I was still working on photos here when we tendered over to the club, a little before the dockmaster left for the day, to grab a key card so we could walk down to St. Armand's Circle for dinner. The club itself is closed, as so many are on Monday. St. Armands is one of my favorite places on the west coast, and it was hit hard, with lots of vegetation missing from the causeway and many businesses still shuttered. We had a nice pizza at Venezia, which was packed. In the morning we will weigh anchor and continue south toward Boca Grande.

Finally on the West Coast

We are underway northbound in the Gulf of Mexico, just a mile or two off the coast, bound for Pass-a-Grille, just north of the Tampa Bay entrance. We are headed to Clearwater for a few days, to connect with good friends Karen and Ben before they go gallivanting off to various conferences and family visits.

Saturday morning we lingered a bit in Moore Haven, taking advantage of dock power for some welcome morning heat and topping up our water tank, before dropping lines to continue downbound on the Caloosahatchee. I had reached out to our friends Laura and Ben in Fort Myers to see if we could connect over dinner, and the earliest they were available was Monday, which gave us a leisurely transit of the river.

With some extra time on our hands, we set our sights on LaBelle for the evening, which meant we'd only have one lock, at Ortona, for the day. That proved an excellent strategy, as Louise was hit with a bout of allergies the likes of which neither of us had seen. It had started on Friday, but by the time we reached the Ortona Lock on Saturday she was barely functional, declaring she was not up to doing another lock.

Vector at anchor in LaBelle, as seen through the bridge. This is as close as we can get.

We dropped the hook upriver of the LaBelle drawbridge, off-channel just outside the cable area (map). It was not even 2pm. I used the downtime to fix a few things, and Louise crashed for a while, exhausted from all the sneezing. We were hoping it might pass by dinner time, but when that rolled around she was still miserable and did not even feel like eating.

I splashed the tender and headed ashore stag, swinging past the new LaBelle Yacht Club patio restaurant, which has a dock. The far-too-loud live music drove me away, and instead I landed at the town courtesy dock, eventually ending up at Forrey Grill, an Italian joint where I ate at the bar. I was prepared to bring something home for Louise but she still had no appetite.

Once back aboard and settling in to my evening video-watching routine, I noticed our Starlink had become glacially slow. I never figured out why, but I suspect it was related to them discontinuing our previous plan and forcing us on to a more expensive but lower-performance plan just in the last few days. Our AT&T hot spot was running ten times faster, so I just turned the Starlink off. When I turned it back on yesterday the speed was much better.

The LaBelle Yacht Club, new since our last visit. It looks nice but the music was loud.

Sunday morning Louise was just fine, almost as if the allergy thing had never happened, and we weighed anchor and continued downriver. The traffic was not bad in the morning but picked up throughout the day, and we had a 20-minute wait at the Franklin Lock. One of the downstream gates was inoperative, and the other was working at reduced speed.

As we approached Fort Myers we began to see damage from Hurricane Milton. Nothing nearly as severe as what we saw post-Ian, but still significant. We proceeded into the anchorage at dead slow, "clutch ahead," since we had no way of knowing if the storm had done anything to the unmarked channel, wherein we normally have just a foot below the keel. We made it in without incident and had the entire anchorage, normally full of long-term boats, all to ourselves (map).

No doubt Milton had a hand in that, but there are also no services here now whatsoever since Ian. No place to get water, or empty waste, or even to safely and conveniently land a dinghy. The two downtown marinas have been shuttered since Ian, and only a small section of exposed concrete-and-steel bulkhead is available to get ashore. That's where we landed the tender Sunday evening for dinner.

The bar at Forrey Grill, which was tucked in the back and not visible from the dining room, where there was a long wait. It's not as purple as it looks in this photo.

Tying up and disembarking even in the moderate chop from the south wind was a challenge, as was securing the dinghy so it would not be bashing hard parts into the bulkhead. As we were doing that, we realized it would be completely untenable Monday evening, when winds were forecast to be NW and there would likely be 2-3 footers bashing into this seawall.

We had a nice stroll around town, which is still vibrant as ever, and landed at long-time favorite Capone's for dinner. I texted Ben to let them know we'd have to wave off for Monday evening unless we could find a different place to land. Their Sunday plans had evaporated, and so they met us after dinner at Sip & Sizzle, a new steak-and-cocktails place, for drinks. We spent well over an hour nursing a couple of drinks and catching up; it's always great to see them.

My antipasto salad came with this plate of garlic knots. These two got saved for breakfast.

Monday morning we were pinned in the anchorage until the tide came up above zero from its low of -0.5'; we had arrived at +0.5' and had just over a foot under the keel. After lunch we weighed anchor, squeaked back out of the anchorage, and continued southwest in 30-35 knots of wind and a small-craft advisory. Vector has no trouble with this, and underway with the stabilizers working is more comfortable than bouncing at anchor, but this weather had what is often a nightmarish section of waterway blissfully devoid of other traffic.

That said, in the middle of the narrow and shallow section known as the Miserable Mile, we came face to face with a pair of small pusher tugs, each with a barge on the head, and hundreds of feet of dredge pipe strung between them. They were struggling in the wind, and as a result, taking the whole channel. They never answered the radio on any channel, nor did they respond to my whistle signals, and I ended up dredging the mud at the edge of the channel avoiding them. Sadly, there are never any consequences for this sort of behavior unless there is a collision -- we missed by mere feet.

Passing two tugs with dredge pipe very close aboard.

The high winds were supposed to clock around to the NW by evening, and so we tucked up in the corner of Pine Island Sound, just off the south end of Pine Island, a familiar stop, and dropped the hook (map) as close to shore as we could get. The winds stayed westerly, and stiff, the whole night, so it was not the best choice. Even so, we braved the waves by splashing the tender and heading ashore to the Waterfront Restaurant in St. James City for dinner, which was good. They have 16 dock-and-dine slips, but we were the only boat.

Tuesday I had figured to weigh anchor first thing and continue north past Cabbage Key and Boca Grande, all the way to Englewood or maybe even Venice. Louise-the-weather-router pointed out, however, that if we waited a day, we would have a perfect two-day window to go all the way to Clearwater in the gulf. That would bypass the perennially shallow stretch south of Venice, a few timed drawbridges, and whatever unknown challenges might still exist from Milton.

We're the only nut jobs arriving by boat.

We made it a short day and stopped at long-time favorite Cabbage Key (map), where we tendered ashore for dinner at the inn. This place is packed to the gills at lunch, the inspiration for Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger in Paradise, but it's downright quiet at dinner time, and we've been coming here for a decade. They weathered both Ian and Milton, and sometimes it feels like they could last forever, with many of the structures now 75 years old.

Yesterday we weighed anchor and headed toward Boca Grande, where we expected to anchor for an easy exit at dawn this morning for an all-day run to Eggmont Key in Tampa Bay. But by the time we were passing the tip of Cayo Costa, gulf conditions let us just continue out the inlet and make a day run to Venice. I called the yacht club there to be sure they had room for us, as there is no place for us to anchor in Venice.

This sign on the rest room made me chuckle.

After passing the tip of Gasparilla Island we made the hard right into the unmarked "swash channel" leading north from the inlet. We've used this channel before, but we were nervous enough about what Milton might have done (hurricanes often move, close, or open these sorts of channels) that I called TowBoatUS for a report, and also solicited reports online from folks who had been through since the storm. We found no less than 11' in the swash channel.

It was not flat calm yesterday, so we had a bit of a bouncy, but tolerable, ride. We arrived to the Venice Yacht Club right around 4, and had to wait a short while to get to the fuel dock, where we took on a bit of fuel and pumped out our tanks. We normally do that at sea, but here on the west coast it is required to go out beyond nine miles, adding 3-4 miles to our trip. I was expecting the fuel to be cheaper than it was, so we only added 100 gallons, instead of the 700 I had planned. We used a bunch more fuel coming the long way around, and this will tide us over until we are back on the east coast.

Vector at anchor in Pine Island Sound, as seen from St. James City.

We could have stayed right there on the fuel dock, but that would have us backing out through the mud at low tide this morning, so after pumping out we moved around to the T-head and tied up for the night (map). We had a nice dinner at the outdoor tiki bar adjacent to the pool, but we were glad to learn that Wednesday is Pasta Night in the dining room, which smelled great. After dinner we had a nice walk, but we had to turn around at The Crow's Nest because the jetty and its park are closed and fenced off, the aftermath of Milton. We saw many buildings still being remediated from being inundated by storm surge. We returned to the bar for dessert after our walk, but had missed the last slice of bananas Foster cheesecake by mere minutes.

This morning we dropped lines just before 9am and slipped back out the inlet. Seas have been getting progressively calmer throughout the day, and the plotter has us arriving to the anchorage by 4pm. Had we left from Boca Grande we would have had to anchor in Tampa Bay, but our departure from Venice is letting us get all the way to a more protected anchorage inside the Pass-a-Grille inlet.

Tomorrow we will have a short day in the gulf to Clearwater. We've usually anchored there, where the city has a free day dock, borrowing a car from our friends. This time, however, we've booked a dock, to make things a bit easier and also so we can land the scooters, as Louise is looking forward to some more time on her new steed. We'll be in Clearwater until the 20th, and you won't hear from me again until we are on our way back south.