January 9th - Sarasota to Punta Gorda

Back to basics; we left the resort marina bright and early on Monday the 9th of January.  Another morning that I was thankful we had a new chartplotter. The sun was bright and directly in our eyes so Tom watched closely for crab pots as I kept my eyes on the track line which took us back to the ICW exactly the way we came in. Cruising down the ICW we were in awe of the number of homes, hotels, etc. along the way that had empty slips and docks. There seemed to be hundreds if not thousands of them. Tom was really bothered by it and I wondered why people didn't put a sign at the end of their dock advertising that you could tie up for a small fee.  We anchored in a cove that had some very nice homes along the shoreline. We shared the water with a sailboat and a few dolphins. The evening was beautiful the water like glass so we did a little fishing while watching the sunset.  We hoped to pull into Punta Gorda early enough to spend some time in town so we were up and at um early.  There were several bridges ahead of us that had to be raised for us to pass through.  We arrived at the first and realized it was on a schedule and we were 15 minutes early. This gave me an opportunity to to practice my piloting skills, keeping Laughter in the middle of the channel. Once we arrived at Charlette Harbor and turned in towards Punta Gorda we realized we realized it was 22 miles from the mouth of Charlotte Harbor to the mooring field. No worries, no schedule!  Thankfully we had great directions from the marina as the markers into the area had been knocked out during Hurricane Charlie and never replaced. 

Sunset on the cove anchorage

dolphins playing