Heading south from Sarasota to Venice. Sarasota’s not been the best: lost wallet, glitchy head, dead battery, no pump out. Grrrr. Weighing anchor and getting underway felt good.My feeling about Sarasota wasn’t helped by the dour and unfriendly attitude of the staff at Marina Jack’s when we pulled in to purchase fuel and get the tanks pumped out.
Interestingly, the pump out facility — a large shop vac type thing that sucks sewage out of the (septic) holding tank on the boat — was broken. While there was were other installations at the Marina on other docks, most of the staff was utterly disinterested in offering assistance — with the exception of a younger dock hand who was helpful and is unlikely to last long at the Marina.
While I really wanted to get on the “outside,” into the Gulf and head for Fort Meyers in one quick run we ended up taking the ICW *again* because the winds were gusting to 35 mph, making the outside passage bumpy and uncomfortable. Another GRRRRR!!!
At least the scenery was kinda pretty. The closer we got the Venice, the nice it seemed to get.
Anchoring in Venice really wasn’t an option, so we docked at the Crows Nest Marina. The Harbormaster there couldn’t have been more different than the one at Marina Jacks — as you can tell, Marina Jacks really got under my skin.
I didn’t do a whole lot of exploring in Venice. I mostly stayed on the boat, did some boat projects, and fished a bit. Cita and Denise made use of the free bikes at the marina and did a little bit of touring around the area. The seemed to like it. I just wanted to get out of the whole Sarasota area and to a place where the water was a clear blue and warm.
