Day 222-223- November 25 & 26 Clearwater, FL to Sarasota, FL to Cape Coral, FL


Woo hoo!  Back in the ICW system!  Time to make tracks in familiar territory from Clearwater to Marina Jack in Sarasota.


Calm waters and early departure, just the way the Captain likes it.


The Clearwater Marina was right next to this bridge.

Hmmm, doesn't look like Carrabelle.


Back in the beautiful section of the Florida Waterway.

Save on dockage fees, keep your sailboat in your swimming pool. 
Hurricane damage more evident as we go South.


Was it Helene or Milton?





Very unusual to see one that is in an upright position. Still sad.


More bridges?? Go figure...

The Don Cesar Hotel on St Pete Beach, a landmark for vessels on the Gulf and airplanes flying into St Pete's Albert Whitted Field, my old airport.


Once again, we were being watched...


Oh look, another bridge!


These birds were roosting on the remains of an old boat.

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay.

It's big!


A shrimp boat.

Purple paint was on discount.

At Marina Jack.  Closed for a little while after hurricane Helene, they were open by the time we got there.  The only marina pumping fuel on Sarasota Bay.  We got some!





Up early and gone, one bridge with a schedule we needed to make for a long day, all the way to Cape Coral, Ft Myers.


Snow Goose is only about 12 feet high, but not low enough to get under these swing bridges.  This one was on a schedule and we timed our travel to get there without too much of a wait.  The arrow points to the bridge operator, who has to walk out onto the bridge to open it.  Let's hope it doesn't break and strand him!



How many pelicans can you invite to your tree?


This place lost some glass, but the boats look okay.


This place wasn't as fortunate, they lost the roof for sure. Boats? Who knows?


I'm throwing this picture in because it has a pretty paint job and this way I remember where the hurricanes did the most damage.
The next pictures show a some of the damage along the waterway.
I'm sure there was much more we didn't see.



Venice took a lot of damage in Hurricane Helene.




This had been in someone's yard.

Removing deadfall palm trees from the waterway.

Yup, it's a ferry... and a refrigerator with no door in the bushes.




We had dolphins playing in our wake for about 5 minutes today. So much fun to watch. I have edited the videos to 3 minutes and split it into part 1 and 2 so this blog would accept the file size.
Watch for the dolphin with the damaged dorsal fin. It certainly didn't slow him down.

Can you see how much of it appears to be gone? We think a boat propeller sliced it. The back part was there, but it was flopped to the side. Poor thing...





The boat traffic definitely increased as we turned into the channel to Cape Coral.


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Comments

  1. Bob the DuckNovember 30, 2024 at 9:07 AM

    Thanks for sharing the pictures. I knew the hurricanes were bad but had not seen the damage South of Tampa Bay. Now we know

    ReplyDelete

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