Sunday April 12: The Seafood Shack

The Seafood Shack is an older marina located relatively close to Steve's sister home in Bradenton so it makes a natural place for us to stay while in the area.

And Peter and Cheryl were headed this way as well (including the interesting trailer Peter crafted to fit his needs!) so they came and spent one more night with us. We'll see them this summer in Canada .....

In the meantime, Terri and Scott arrived and joined us on the flybridge for a trip out to the Manatee River.


We were in search of dolphins again. Last year was quite successful with a number of dolphins coming to play in our front bow wave.

This year wasn't quite as good but it was a beautiful day. Twice we had a single dolphin join us for a while.

They are always fun to watch!

There were some really strange cloud formations over the Tampa Bay Bridge - not sure what that was all about but it didn't rain or anything.

Just very hot. And getting hotter. Maybe we should be going north sooner?

But then when we spoke with the marina in New York (near Syracuse) where Guppy is stored, there is still snow on the ground.

Think we'll just stick with the plan of leaving here in a couple of weeks ;-)

There was a minor battle for the remains of the fish I cleaned for dinner last night. Last two of the mackerel Steve and Peter caught.

The crane sat on the railing of our boat and even though it was the largest bird around, it couldn't move as fast as the small gulls that zoomed in when Steve tossed a piece of fish into the water.

Steve was curious to see how the mackerel fared being frozen (but frozen very fresh) - still excellent. Nicely breaded in crushed pretzels (he ran out of bread crumbs) and lightly fried in garlic butter. Once again a great job with the fish!

We'll stay until Wednesday and then continue north. Not sure how far we'll go - depends on the weather. Terri and Scott are headed back to Ohio soon as well.

In the meantime, we're on the lookout for any strange animal sightings - like this hippo that we spotted the other day.

Why would someone want a hippo in their front yard?

Somedays I'm just at a loss ......