Sailing to the Florida Keys VI ~ New Horizons

December 5, 2011

Leaving Punta Blanca Island, Cayo Costa
Boca Grande
Destination: St. James City

Yay! We were able to sleep in this morning before beginning our sail to St. James City. Today’s estimated nautical mileage was 16 miles. We left at 11 am instead of 10 am like we’d planned but that didn’t affect us since we were not able to sail most of the way. We had to motor sail because the winds were not favoring us! L Plus we had to go through some pretty tight channels.

Also, there were quite a bit of motor boats passing us. It is so upsetting when motor boats whizzz right by us! If they’d of taken a safety class before driving their motor boat, they would of learned that when passing a sailboat they need to slow down!! They go by so fast and their wake creates such huge waves that it makes our boat rock and roll dangerously!! When I am at the helm and a motor boat passes us it really makes me anxious and nervous and it does the same to Maxi! They are so inconsiderate!!

St. James City is an interesting little island. We didn’t get to see much of it but it is almost like Venice, Italy, I would imagine, with canals instead of streets. There are some roads that lead further inland but from the bay in which we came in you can see the canals between homes.

We were able to anchor not far from land south of St. James City in the San Carlos Bay. It was a comfortable anchorage, very calm water and not very many boats anchored around us.

After we’d anchored we got in the dinghy to go on land to take Maxi to do his business and walk around a bit. We went down a canal and anchored on a dinghy/boat dock right outside the Water Front Restaurant, there were some really good smells in the air around the place! LOL! After walking around a bit we decided to check out their menu and pick up some to go food. They had the usual, burgers, pasta, seafood, etc..but one of the appetizers caught my eye….GATOR BITES! I’ve never in my life eater gator!! Soooooo, along with our order of steak burgers we decided to pick up some gator bites! And well, it isn’t much different then eating chicken!! And at least now I can say that I’ve eaten GATOR!! LOL!!