We left at sunrise on Thursday morning for Cabbage Key. It
was a fairly long day and we wanted to get in early enough so we could drop the
tender and go celebrate Sean’s birthday.
It was a long day. After much
consulting with folks on the NOG (Nordhavn Owners Group), friends, and ultimately
SeaTow for final verification, we decided to go down the inside. We figured we'd do it once to see what there was to see. It was helpful for us to have Vector ahead with their slightly shallower draft. Well, we knew we’d
be in very skinny water and we weren’t disappointed! We ended up dredging only once, a small area just north of
Venice Inlet. Actually, it was just a quick “bump” so we probably only lost a
tiny bit of bottom paint. Then a bit later we pulled off to the side of the
channel to wait for a bridge and though Vector was in water that the charts
said was deep, they hit a hump and grounded temporarily. It made for a bit of a
stressful day.
We had a surprise when we found out that one of the bridges
was having work done and closed from 10-2. Luckily we heard people talking
about it on the radio so we slowed down. By the time we got to the bridge we
only had to wait about 15 minutes. There were several boats all station-keeping,
waiting for the opening. It seems the closure wasn’t well advertised. One boat had been waiting for over three
hours, ouch! While we were
station-keeping, we struck up a conversation with a sailboat that was close by
and found that their good friends have a Nordhavn and that he was in fact one
of the people that had given us advice on traveling down the coast. Small
world!
We arrived at Cabbage Key around 4:00 and anchored next to
Useppa Key, just south of Whoopee Key. (You have to love the names.) The
anchorage is really beautiful, nestled between several keys. The weather was
chilly but calm, sunny and gorgeous. We
celebrated Sean’s birthday at the restaurant on Cabbage Key. The interior of
the entire restaurant is lined with one dollar bills. You can see them on the
wall behind the guys in this photo. The food was delicious, the staff was super
friendly and we had a great time.
Birthday Boy & Martin
Our morning view – it doesn’t get much better than this!
This morning we were off to Tarpon Point Marina in Cape Coral where we'll be visiting with fellow Nordy owners Brad & Lorraine.
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