Sunday, December 21
Emerging from the cabin this
morning, we noticed that all the piers had a pelican sentry guarding our slip.
Our personal pelican protector (PPP) made us feel much safer.
 |
| The Pelican Sentry at Clearwater Marina |
We made it in the predicted in the 5
hours. The anchorage was out the back door of the brightly lit Don Cesar,
a huge pink resort hotel on St. Pete Beach. Surrounding us were waterfront
homes. It felt as though we were in Prestigious West Bloomington (a
suburb in the Twin Cities Metro area).
Monday, December 22
Tim plotted two courses. One
course seemed a sure thing, and was well documented by Active Captain and other
resources. The other was a “looks
okay” course with several charted shoals and shallow water warnings. The “looks
okay” course was shorter by an hour or more. Unless of course we ran Sea
Fever aground.
We decided on the sure thing and set
out at 7:45.
After 3.5 months of this journey, we
sometimes forget to take pictures. After all, how many pictures of water and
trees can one take! However, today, we snapped a photo of a brown pelican
rookery.
 |
| Pelican Rookery by Don Cesar Resort |
The fatigue of the last week, both
from the anticipation of the crossing of the Gulf, and the actual crossing was
still haunting us, but we were getting excited to get to Bradenton. It was our
last destination that was time sensitive. We really wanted to be there
for Christmas Eve.
We knew at the onset of this trip,
that we would miss our friends and family back home a lot. But missing
our Thanksgiving week food fest, starting with pizza with friends Thanksgiving
Eve, and continuing nonstop through the weekend, and our Christmas Eve and New
Year’s Eve get togethers was hard. Some of these celebrations had been
going on since before any of us got gray hair!
Spending Christmas Eve with the
Finneys, their daughter, son in law and grandson (Granthams), who Tim has known
for decades, and Kathy has known for over 13 years was the closest thing to
being home that we could possibly hope for! Good, loving people, all of
whom care about us, and for whom we
care. And hey, there is even a kid who loves Christmas (and presents), and a
dog that loves everyone. Could Norman Rockwell have done better? We
don’t think so.
It was important to both of us, and
we were going to make it with days to spare!
When we went under the Sunshine
Skyway Bridge, we knew we were close. There have been many times that we sat on
the dock in the bay with Mike and Jackie and watched the cruise ships go by the
bridge with their lights bright in the darkness.
 |
| Sea Fever heads under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge |
We passed the Finney’s home, waved,
and headed up the Manatee River to our destination, Twin Dolphin Marina.
We hailed the marina on our radio,
were given our slip number, and asked for someone to help us dock. One of the
marina’s staff helped us dock successfully. Tired of ham sandwiches in
the cockpit, we decided to eat a proper lunch at Pier 22, the restaurant attached to the
marina. We were joined by Jeff, Elizabeth and Daniel, our friends from Brisa
(Twin Dolphin Marina is now their home port).
We called the Finney’s, who invited
us to come on over after lunch and when we got our car.
We called Enterprise Rental for a
pick up. It turned out to be much easier than the pickup with Don the Driver in
Panama City! Now mobile, we headed out to the Finney’s house. Everyone got hugged. A little wine was shared, appetizers eaten, and the Kathy had some fun playing with Yoshi, the
dog. About 8 PM we slunk to our car, headed back to the boat and crashed!
Recovery from our long sojourn
across the Gulf seems to be taking longer than we expected!
No comments:
Post a Comment