Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Four great days in a luxurious marina in Sarasota

On Thursday, January 5th we pulled up to the T-dock assignment at the Hyatt Regency Resort Hotel in Sarasota.  It is a small marina with the Hyatt on one side the Ritz Carlton on the other and private high rise condomininiums directly in front of us. A tremendous thank-you extended to our friend Captain Rich for arranging our stay!!  We had access to the pool, hot tub, fitness room and because we were on the T-dock we had our very own large patio with chairs provided.  We had a ball in Sarasota. We rode our bikes downtown to the shops and to a motorcycle rally held called Thunder On The Bay.  We walked peanut to a nearby beach to watch a sunset and hunt shells.  Our friend Chris came in by car from nearby Bradenton and took us to Mote Aquarium and shopping for some needed supplies and with the return of warm weather we enjoyed sitting in the sunshine on our own little deck visiting with the curious who came to talk with us.  Tom spent one afternoon with a local charter captain, Captain Mike.  Captain Mike helped us get our depth finder set correctly and successfully reprogram the alarm for it. He walked us through the charts giving us anchorage ideas from Sarasota to the keys and he was took a look at our generator to see if it was the selenoid switch as suspected that prevented it from starting.  As it turned out the generator started on every try which was a relief to us but we are still going to order another celenoid just in case.