We had no trouble sleeping Monday night at anchor. Tuesday morning we woke up to a rainy day, but wanted to fuel up and move anchorages anyway. We waited for a break in the drizzle & made our way over to Clearwater Beach Marina to fill the tanks. After doing the math, we burned 1.15 gallons of diesel per hour running @ 1700 rpm. About what I’d expected.
As we were fueling up, running down the docks to greet us was Mr. Ted! You may recall that we met him a few months ago at the Harbour Marina & he’s one of the biggest reasons we came back to Clearwater. How could we miss the opportunity to see him again?
He pointed out his dock and condo across the bay so once we were done fueling up, we moved Selah around into Mandalay Channel and anchored about 100 yards away from his boat.
There were a few shallow spots in the channel coming into Mandalay, but the tide was up 3′ so we had no issues. Hopefully the same holds true when we try to leave.
It’s a very convenient anchorage…we dinghy’d in to the free library docks several times so we could explore and Allison could inflict her punishing workouts upon me. She was also able to pay $6 to get in the public pool facility and stand under the hot water shower for 30 minutes or so…she returned to the boat a much happier person after that.
We were also able to dinghy around the corner to Island Way Grill and meet up with several old friends of mine from Tampa.
Thursday morning we tackled the chore that is removing the dinghy motor and putting the dinghy on the bow of the boat. If we’re just traveling down the ICW or something, we have davits that the dinghy hangs from off the back of the boat. In the gulf or anywhere with the possibility for big waves, this gets too dangerous, so we strap the dinghy upside down on the bow. It’s a pain, but worth it.
We pulled anchor around 8am and made our way down to Sarasota. We’re going to hang around here until noonish on Friday, then head on down to Venice so we can again have the best pizza we’ve ever had ever at our spot there.
This pizza is so incredible it’s basically the entire reason we’re stopping in Venice.
Seriously.