Nice cruising in Pine Island Sound!

Just for fun, we went out to cruise some bays near Sarasota Monday and Tuesday. We went about 50 miles South and anchored at Cayo Costa state park, which is the next island North of Sanibel and Captiva islands. It is a very nice island accessible only by boat.

Of course, on the way through the ICW and the inland bays, the dolphins picked us up surfed and jumped in our wake. Even thought I've seen them a hundred times, I'm always captivated by them. They usually always turn sideways in the air so they don't belly flop when they land, or maybe it's to see the landing better. This one was easy to take a picture of him jumping because he'd surf the surface and then go down deep before jumping.

After we anchored, we took the dinghy into the beach on the inland side. They have a very large unpopulated gulf beach too, but dogs are not allowed on the gulf beaches and Daisy loves chasing a stick into the water. Kathy loves finding seashells, and this is a good shelling beach because it's not walked by hundreds of people every day. It's pretty secluded.

I liked walking in the shallows because there are interesting things to find, like this live starfish. Kathy found one too.









This was a pretty seashell, but I didn't keep it because it was occupied by a hermit crab.












... and this live sea urchin. This is not a spiny urchin, just the regular kind, like a Japanese restaurant would serve raw as "uni".








I found this empty sea urchin shell, but didn't keep it either because they get very fragile when dry. Kathy probably kept 2 dozen seashells for her collection including a few small conchs and a whelk shell.





When we went back to the dinghy, this Great Blue Heron was standing there and didn't want to leave. When we got very close with Daisy, he just casually walked about 50 ft. away and watched us until we left his beach to him again.





We had dinner on the aft deck and watched a pretty but unremarkable sunset... even though I just remarked about it.










Then, yesterday we cruised back up to Sarasota out in the gulf instead of the ICW. It was a very calm day in the open gulf, almost glassy at times. I tried fishing by trolling again for an hour, with no success. I thing you have to try longer and harder than that to actually catch fish, but it was fun.



I planed it for a while to feel the props because I had touched bottom in the ICW when I turned too late at a turn and got out of the very narrow channel. It really makes a big disturbance in that calm water. We decided that there was some vibration, so today we had our primary props put back on. We have been running on our backup props since October when I took the good Nibral props off to have them tuned after putting 6,000 miles on them doing the Great Loop Route 2 years ago. It turned out that they didn't need tuning up after all that use and even touching the bottom in the ICW in Georgia 2 or 3 times. The bronze props we took off today did need work as one had a bent tip of one blade.

Tomorrow my sister, Beth, and some friends are coming to Sarasota so we'll go out for a little afternoon cruise again.