Venice Beach, FLA

6.19

We were awakened early this morning to power boats speeding very closely off our stern causing a loud raucous and making very large wakes. Although unpleasant, I was actually happy to get out of bed when my alarm went off at 5am. After readying the boat for the sail, we weighed anchor and set off for Boca Grande Inlet. We raised the sails before ever leaving the inlet and then headed off to the right side towards a small cut-through that would shoot us out into the open waters of the Gulf.
Imagine our surprise when we rounded the corner and were faced with a sea of at least 50 small powerboats crowding the mouth of the channel. Apparently June is prime tarpon fishing for these guys and they firmly believed the early bird gets the worm - at least that explained all the rush this morning.
Well, they were right in the path of where we wanted to go, but a sailboat with their sails up has the right of way (even though we were cheating at the time and still had our motor on). We headed right for the middle of them and they parted the way like the Red Sea. Until a group of tarpon started stirring up the water off our port side and then it was a mad dash for all 50 boats to see who could get there and get their hooks in the water first. I have never seen anything like it - the whole open Gulf and they are all flocked in one 100 yard area.
After that fiasco the rest of the day was relatively calm. It being the summer and all, the winds have mostly died down and so we had to motor the whole way. We thought that we would be sailing, so we had built in extra time. Since we motored, we actually got to Venice by 1:00pm. Since we got such an early jump on the day, we still had most of the afternoon to walk the mutt and explore the area. We docked at the city dock, which we were told was free dockage for 18hours, with the intent on just staying overnight. After we had docked however, we realized we had docked right next to a sign that said no overnight dockage. Hmmm...strange. We docked anyway and set our lines for the evening. We will just keep our fingers crossed and hope that the sign refers to smaller boats and other rif-raf.
We walked Koa until we thought he might get heat exhaustion, then we hung out on the boat for a bit. We are heading over to the Crow's Nest Marina and Restaurant for some fuel and a bite to eat. Tomorrow morning we will get another early jump on the day and head for Sarasota where we have heard there is lots to do and plenty of transient-friendly boating areas.