After a rocky night, like REALLY rocky night, we woke up to a beautiful new day. Fishing boats went by quite often at speed, particularly one at about 3:30 am that actually rolled Owen from his side of the bed to mine.

We had big plans for the day, and we were eager to get started. So eager, it appears, that I made a mistake pulling up the anchor. We use a windlass, and I know (I KNOW!!!) not to let the loop between the chain and the rope go through the capstan. I KNOW THIS! But this time, I did, and it got stuck and wound the anchor up so tight that there was no give anywhere on it. There was no fixing it. Nothing budged anywhere. There’s no accessible clutch to release the capstan, and we were in a pickle. Which is a fitting comparison because we both hate pickles, so being in one makes for a very bad start to a beautiful day!

Well, the anchor was up and not going down, and we had three hours to our next destination, so we decided to start moving toward our destination. I drove while Owen evaluated our options. God bless the previous owner, who kept the manual for every single thing on our boat. The manual wasn’t helpful, but at least we could rule out that it could help right away.

Eventually, the solution was a hacksaw. Owen hacked through the lowest link, closest to the anchor. Then he unwound the anchor chain and rope from the capstan. He reconnected the anchor to the new last link in the chain, and we were back in business. We’re very grateful to have a hacksaw on the boat. Owen had just bought it in Shalimar to trim the zincs he put on our boat.

With the morning’s drama complete, we ended up enjoying the rest of the beautiful day. We went to Egmont Key, which we learned about from Scott and Karen DeVoll’s presentation at the AGLCA Rendezvous. It’s an old fort and abandoned town and military installment and bird sanctuary (closed to the public) with a lighthouse (closed to visitors) and is accessible only by boat. That makes it a really cool stop for Loopers.

We pulled up and anchored on the east side of the island on the inaccessible beach. The area was busy with fishing boats and tourists. The water was a bit rocky. Then we took the dinghy over to an open area of the beach and tied up to a post on the beach. We walked a couple miles along the sand, brick, and concrete paths on the island. The beaches were filled with boaters who had cruised over to spend a day. The fort remnants were not as busy, and we really enjoyed walking around, sharing the path with some lizards and turtles.

As we were leaving, we chuckled at some teens who were kicked out of the off-limits beach area. Then the park ranger turned her ire on us for tying our dinghy to a pole. We thought we were being smart and didn’t know that was against the rules. So…don’t do that.

We dinghied back to the boat and got back on board. We knew there were a couple bridges coming up that would be a little too short for us, so Owen folded our antennae down to take us down to a height of 18′ for the 22′ bridges. Then it was time to go! The anchor line was very, very slimy. No time to worry about it, though, as we had just a few miles to our stop for the night: Whale Key. We crossed Tampa Bay and headed back toward the ICW. This section of the ICW is narrow and shallow. We may or may not have churned up a tiny bit of silt while hugging the edge of the channel.

Our anchorage for the night was Whale Key. We peeled off of the ICW and turned toward what we thought was an island, but ended up being just a shallow shoal just below the surface. We dropped our anchor in about 8 feet of water.

Owen decided to take a dip in the water with his goggles to make sure that silt we may or may not have churned up had any effect on our props. Thankfully, our props look just fine. Owen will sleep better tonight knowing this.

We watched the sun set and began to make dinner. Shrimp and pasta alfredo tonight. We were able to get some local TV stations on our antenna, so we were thrilled (Did I say thrilled? I didn’t mean to) to be able to watch Lethal Weapon 2.