Adventures of Boreas: Day 159 – Marina Jack to Burnt Store Marina, Charlotte Harbor

We have a longer day planned today. With our stop at Sarasota instead of Venice, we will travel over 50 miles today. While we have easily done that many miles (and more) on other sections of the trip, that is an aggressive schedule for this area. There are two reasons it is difficult to travel that many miles each day – speed limits and bridges. There are an amazing number of “speed limits” on the Gulf Intercoastal. You have no wake speed, minimum wake speed, 25 mph limits and normal safe operating speed (which we assume is faster than 25 mph for some boats). Sometimes the speed limit is for inside the channel and sometimes just for outside the channel. So, along with watching your channel marks, you also need to watch your speed limit signs.

While most bridges don’t need to open for us to go through, there are a few swing bridges with very low clearance (usually around 9 feet). Two swing bridges had to open for us today, but with the radio antenna down on Boreas, none of the other bridges needed to open (we were lucky on one bridge to be at relatively low tide, giving us two extra feet of clearance which made a big difference). Bridges can slow you down not only because they have to open for you, but also because some of them are on a schedule and open only two or three times an hour (versus on demand). One of today’s swing bridges only opens on the hour and half hour. We did a few minutes of running hard to make that bridge so we didn’t have to wait an extra half hour for the next opening.

We had an awesome dolphin encounter as we cruised through Gasparilla Sound toward Charlotte Harbor. We had over 10 dolphins swimming with us at one time. They were swimming under the bow and on both sides of the boat surfing in the wake. I tried to get some pictures, but wasn’t very successful (lots of pictures of water where a dolphin had just been).

Miles: 57.0 Bridges: 10 Locks: 0