Our cruising life has officially started, and we had quite an interesting trip to Fort Myers Beach! It started uneventfully and quickly turned to one thing after the other. We kept a positive attitude and sailed on. Join us on this 4-day journey! 🙂
Video Transcription
Intro (ICW Florida)
So, we’re at Anchorage at the cabbage key and, and I started smelling some, some burning, and smoke starts to fill the cabin. Took that off that’s obviously not what you want. That is obviously not what you want. (ICW Florida)
Departure Day (ICW Florida)
It’s been a long time coming but the date is finally here. We are leaving St. Petersburg Florida for our first destination, Fort Myers Beach. Our plan is to spend about a month here at the dock before making our way down to the keys at the end of hurricane season. Woohoo! Are you excited? Yes, so excited. Arthur, no. It’s tough being Satori’s head bartender. It is, it’s a rough life. Back on that champagne again. We stepped it up from the $9.00 a bottle to the $9.99 a bottle. Cheers! Cheers! Oh yeah, that’s much better than the barefoot bubbly. Much better. (ICW Florida)
Sunshine Skyway Bridge (ICW Florida)
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge spans Tampa Bay with a length of over four miles connecting St. Petersburg to Manatee County. Opened in 1987 this massive bridge was built to replace an older bridge that was destroyed by an ocean freighter. During a tropical storm in 1980, the 600-foot, 20,000-pound vessel Summit Venture collided with the support column sending over 1,200 feet of the bridge plummeting into Tampa Bay. The collision caused six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound bus to fall one hundred fifty feet into the water, killing thirty-five people. It’s strange to think this is the last time we’ll be sailing under the skyways for a while. Seeing this sight never gets old. (ICW Florida)
Rough Ride (ICW Florida)
So, we just got to our Anchorage, got the anchor set, relax for about fifteen minutes and we got this storm rolling in. You can see it’s raining right in front of us. This would be the first test of our Mantus 65-pound sexy ass anchor. We’re good. What do you think? Not scared at all. Yeah. It’s hot in here though. It is. Got the generator running, get some AC down below. Oh yeah, luxuries. A bit of a rough ride this morning out of Longboat on our way to Cabbage Key. Pretty windy, pretty wavy.
Arthur doesn’t know what’s going on. Arthur, what do you think about this? You liking it Arthur? He’s like I just want to run free and they won’t let me leave. It’s too rough little man. Well, we pulled out of Longboat Pass. It’s looking like one to two footers on the forecast but were obviously in a little bit more than that. We tried to put the mainsail up. And we had some battens that were starting to slide out. Not really sure why. Thought I put them in fine, like the Velcro gave away. We saw something fall out of the sail bag after we dropped it. I think it was one of the battens, I guess we’ll find out. (ICW Florida)
Venice Inlet (ICE Florida)
We got about twenty miles and then we can duck into Venice Inlet. And I think that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re not gonna make it to Cabbage Key today. Too rolly, it’s not worth being out here for ten hours. And also, now we can’t use our main sail so. Holding Arthur for dear life. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He wants to go by himself, but I won’t let him. It’s for his own good.
We’re motoring but we also have a, the first reef in the jib up just to give us some stability. We’re going about seven knots at just over thirty degrees into the wind so, were really tight. Winds at about eighteen to twenty knots. So, we’ve got about two and a half hours before the Venice Inlet where we’ll take cover. On days like this, with an outgoing tide and opposing wind, the Venice Inlet can get dangerously rough. These waves are massive. All right. (ICW Florida)
Intracoastal Waterway (ICW Florida)
After the previous day’s conditions, we decided to take the inside route through the Intracoastal Waterway. In this area the ICW weaves its way south through a series of manmade canals and what seems like a million ridges. So, we got, one, two, three, four, five, six bridges, Hatchet Creek, Venice Avenue, South Venice Avenue, Manasota Beach, Tom Adams, Boca Grande Causeway. Where these two bridges are every 20 minutes and then the rest, the next four bridges we have, are on demand. So, we just go up, we call them as were on our way and they open for us.
It’s very umm, makes you feel very powerful, stopping traffic, on demand. We will stop the traffic now captain. Copy that, standing by. Your next bridge is the Tom Adams Bridge. I believe they’re on a schedule, they open on the hour. You’ve got a baby, you did it. I did it, my first bridge. That rum is so good. I can drink a lot of that really quick. Oh, hi. I didn’t know you were filming me. You like that rum. Uh, oh. That’s my girl. Yeah, he’s confused. Nope. No. No. A favorite spot for the Satori crew, we always stop at Cabbage Key Resort for happy hour, then it’s back to Satori for movie night on the big screen. This is awesome. I love this movie. Oh, shit, Oh, damn, Oh, shit. Yeah! Cheers to that. (ICW Florida)
Fire (ICW Florida)
So, we’re at Anchorage at the Cabbage Key, in the morning here and I started smelling some, some burning, and a smoke starts to fill the cabin. It was a scramble uh, it was a scramble just to find out what it was. I shut the generator off because we had the AC running. Narrowed it down to this front v-berth here, notice the cover that was up in here like this, took that off. That’s obviously not what you want. That is obviously not what you want.
All I can think about is, what if that was at four in the morning? There’s no way we would have caught that. It’s funny as I just had that switch replaced too, so. That’s scary. Chase and I were in here while you’re in the shower and like we start to smell something burning, like wood burning. Yeah. The smoke started coming in here. Come here, close this door so you can look in here. What is that? That’s the a/c, close this. That wire just burnt completely off. Oh my god. Shit. And that. That’s scary as hell. The boat could catch on fire. That’s scary. Super scary. I don’t know. I gotta ask somebody who knows what we did wrong. (ICW Florida)
Gulf Star Marina (ICW Florida)
Barking at the pontoon. It’s nice to be back in Fort Myers Beach. Typically, we are only here for a few days at a time but now that we’re moving at a slower cruising pace, we’ve arranged for dockage at Gulf Star Marina for a month. Sure, we have to walk through Doc Fords Bar and Grill with our soiled laundry but there’s free live entertainment every day. Arthur is like, where’s my air conditioning? Is that turned on? (ICW Florida)
