Even easy days can turn into a hard days! Today was one of those days for us. We pulled anchor at Boca Ciega Bay and made our way back to the GICW. The forecast called for scattered t-storms all day. The sky verified the forecast, it was overcast and humid but the water was glass calm. We traveled only 24 miles in 4.5 hours.
Mystic is still cruising at lower speeds; something we’ll need to figure out!
We worked our way to Tampa Bay watching the storms grow offshore but not feeling the effect. We could see the Sunshine Skyway Bridge for miles. It’s an amazing architectural work of art completed in 1987 that cost $244 million; built to shorten the travel distance around Tampa Bay. The total length of the bridge is 4.1 miles which is not that long, but it is pretty impressive!
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| Our first view of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge |
The weather caught up to us when we got to the other side of Tampa Bay. It came on with a big wind but only a little rain. Boats around us began to rush toward their home port, several of them swamping us in the channel with their wake! Things got better once we re-entered the GICW after we passed under the Structure E Bridge (Pinellas Causeway). We continued on to the Cortez Bridge outside of Bradenton Beach then stopped at an anchorage we found on Active Captain. We followed the description which took us parallel to the bridge and close to a fishing pier then into the anchorage where many boats were on the hook. Only about a 100 feet inside of two anchored boats we ran aground.
It’s not the end of the world when you run aground in sand or a soft bottom, especially in tidal areas at low tide. It’s just a real pain in the butt! We have Towboat US coverage so we could have called for a tow at any time. A couple of locals came over to help us. Brandon, a 21 years old from Wisconsin who has been living on his own since he was 13 years old, arrived first, paddling over from his Pearson Van Guard. He knows a lot about boats and noticed
Mystic, guessing she was a Pearson. Brandon carried our anchor out from the front, the side and then the back so we could try to pull ourselves off, but it was a no go!. Another one of our neighbors came by in a dinghy with a 20 hp outboard. He thought he could pull us off. He tried to pull us off from the front and then the back; again, no go! Finally, we all decided we’d just have to wait for the tide to come in. A third neighbor named “Fish”, his girlfriend is “Shell”, took our anchor out against the current so we wouldn’t be driven into the sand bar further as the tide came in. With about an hour left before high tide, we were able to pull ourselves off and anchor safely but not until we ran aground a second time, a soft grounding that we felt right away and moved off of quickly on our own. There is some pride in getting off a grounding on our own!
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| Brandon's Pearson VanGuard |
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| Columbia that the owner chopped off the mast! |
The anchorage wasn't bad. There were many liveaboards in the bay. Brandon told us we shouldn't leave our boat unlocked. One of the liveaboards was known to take anything he wanted and if you pissed him off, he'd cut your anchor line. He is from Columbia. Brandon refers to him as the Columbian Pirate (not to his face of course). We are not sure how much truth there is to all of this, but the funny thing about it is he flies a pirate flag! This bit of info ensured that we would not be going ashore here. High tide was at 8:00 am the next day. We'd be raising anchor at exactly high tide!
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| Bradenton Beach Sunset |
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| Heading back out with our tarp protecting us just enough |
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| Taking photos on the GICW |
As we left Bradenton Beach we carefully made our way out on a different path than that which we took on the way in. Once we left the anchorage area, I aimed close to the fishing pier. Suddenly something caught my eye as I noticed we'd hooked a fishing line from the pier. Dave quickly took stock and saw that it was caught on one of our zincs under the water line. There was really nothing we could do but wait for the line on the pole to snap, which it did. This got the attention of the two boys who were "fishing" while peering intently on their cell phones. I'm pretty sure they thought they missed "the big one", a fish not a sailboat! They will be telling stories about the big one that got away for the rest of their lives. We gathered up the line so it wouldn't get caught in our prop. Sorry guys!
5 comments:
Wow, exciting! Columbian pirates and Mystic is the big fish that got away. You be safe out there and quit bumping bottoms...unless, of course,it's with Dave. Wink, wink.lol
You were right in my sister's area. Dottie and her husband have a condo at Bradenton Beach. I know exactly where you are talking about. I am happy to hear everything turned out alright. :-) Scary about the Columbian. In my experience the boating community is very safe.
@ C.L.Miller, my how you make me blush! We try our best to stay out of trouble; sometimes it just finds us anyway!
@ Pamela Huber Villari; It's often hard to decifer truth from tall tale on the water! In our experience boating is safe as well. You just can't be too careful when you live aboard! We can't afford to lose much of what we have without causing issues in cruising!
Yikes. One thing after another kind of day. The Colombian Pirate sounds scary, actually. Too bad running aground didn't help significantly with the barnacle infestation, but glad you eventually got some of them scraped off. Read too many posts to keep it all straight, but KEY LIME PIE ICE CREAM! Oh Em Gee. Those horrific skeeters, though, those I don't envy you! Hugs!
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