Friday April 10: Anchored in Blackburn Bay

We left the anchorage at Cayo Casta Tuesday morning and headed 14 miles across Gasparilla Sound to the Burnt Store Marina. I found it to be an interesting name for a marina. For some history on the name of this marina, click here.

Peter and Cheryl (Surona/DejaVu) were coming for a couple of days - driving from near Lake Okeechobee where they have spent the winter at Indiantown Marina.

Wednesday: First of course, there was fishing. Cheryl and I figured Steve and Peter caught a fish a mile for the first 5 miles of the trip! It was kind of crazy since Steve had had such a hard time picking up anything at all while trolling.

All in all 5 very nice Spanish mackerel - guess what was for dinner .....

These fish are very easy to clean (nice bone structure) but very difficult to skin.

So I cleaned and Steve and Peter skinned. A nice combo effort for a great dinner.



We even managed to hook up with Andi and Mike on Two Hearts (Banana Bay folks) who ended up near us in the anchorage in Pelican Bay - near Cayo Casta. Same place we were the night before!

Beach walks and trail walks were the order of the day. What a beautiful beach on the Gulf!

The prickly cactus were in full bloom - first time we've seen this.

The state park is really nice - cabins and campsites are available. Very back to nature (that mean no power to the cabins and generators are banned) - almost no cell service as well.

The sunset was once again wonderful.

I don't think I ever tire of seeing the sun setting. Sadly I don't very often get to see it come up ;-)

Thursday was a leisure morning with a dinghy excursion to the manatee hole nearby.

Off then to Cabbage Key to check it out - very similar to Henry's in Georgian Bay. We thought lunch but after finding out it was an hour and 15 minutes before we would be able to be seated we called it a day and left.

Steve instead made the rest of the mackerel for lunch. Lightly breaded and sauteed in garlic butter. Couldn't have been any better!!

We dropped Peter and Cheryl off back at Burnt Store Marina late in the afternoon on Thursday and decided we might as well just stay the night.

Friday though we were up early. Changed the transmission fluid (every 200 miles), pumped out the holding tank, filled the water tank and we were off!!


Finally! We are seeing the white pelicans again! They are so much fun to see as they fly almost in unison with each other. Kind of like a ballet.

These were just sitting along an island near the waterway though. Still enjoyable to see ....

The waterways are again lined with osprey in their nests. The young are getting pretty large at this point.

We don't see many of these birds in the keys - certainly nothing like along the waterways here where almost every channel marker has a nest.

The waterways along this part of the western Florida coast remind us of Canada. Smaller waterways - not a great deal of development.

We anchored for the night at Blackburn Bay.

Which along this coast means a short distance off of the ICW! Some boat traffic but not bad and by early evening - dead calm. My kind of night! Still - the anchor alarm was set just in case ;-) I really do sleep much better knowing the alarm will ring if we move outside of our designated circle ...