June 21, 2004- Venice, (Florida)

I got out of the Manatee River around 9 & sailed about 30 miles to Venice. It was a fantastic daysail...the perfect way to spend my birthday. The wind was Westerly at about 15 knots...I was heeling at about 15-20 degrees with the jib and a reefed main. It was beautiful. Heeling over so far makes it a bit tough to go below for a bottle of water, though...I practically have to walk on the walls. When I got to Venice Inlet, it wasn't a pretty sight. The current was coming out of the pass, and the wind/seas were surging into it. When this happens, you get some nasty breakers. I was actually a bit worried for a little while, because the inlet isn't very big...maybe 30 yards wide, and there are people always standing on the jetties on either side. I was sitting there fighting 6 foot breakers while this little old lady was taking pictures of the 'sailboat coming in the harbor'. How nice. Anyway...I made it through without too much trouble, although the potential for disaster was enormous.

I pulled into the Venice City dock and tied up for the night...it's a free dock you can stay at for 18 hours or so. I met Brandon & Kathy on 'Seaspace'...they were tied up to the dock as well. 'Seaspace' is an Island Packet 420...it's the first one I'd ever seen, although I'd heard lots about them. Nice, Nice boat. We hung out in their cockpit for a while & John & Nan walked up. They are from 'Pacific Rose' a Benneteu 38. It was kinda neat talking to them, because they had met and helped the guy on Prana (check out my links page) a while back.

About 9ish, I said goodbye to them and began walking to The Crow's Nest to treat myself to a nice birthday dinner. It was dark, and as I turned a corner, I almost got run over by 3 bicycles. Before I knew it, they were shouting my name...wha? Who in Venice Florida knows my name?? Turns out it was the guys from Witchy Woman! They had just pulled in and were trying to find a sports bar back in town. So Hammer grabbed me a bike & took off with them. After riding for about 30 minutes, we began to realize that this place they were looking for was quite a long way away from the marina, but by this time it was 10:30, and not many places were open. We were all quite hungry, so we decided to make a Wendy's run...mainly because it was the only thing in sight. The dining room, however, was closed, so we had to go through the drive thru. No Dice. The dude completely ignored us like we weren't even there. We kept going, and happened by a Taco Bell...surely they'd serve a few hungry guys on bikes, right? Only after a little persuading...apparently it's illegal to serve pedestrians via the drive thru. Who'd of thunk it? But...we've got wheels...we're no pedestrians, right? eh...somehow we were able to talk them into it, and we sat on the curb eating our tacos. Quite a birthday dinner, let me tell ya.

We finally made it to the sports bar, and it was completely empty...not exactly what we were looking for, so we didn't stay long, and made the 4 mile trek back to the boat. On the way back we stopped in at another little dive, and hung out for a few minutes. We didn't stay long because it was pretty dead, so we pulled out. Before we knew it, two girls from that place were following behind us in their car, and followed us all the way to the boat. The night was still young, so Winston (my age) and Hammer (40ish) got out their guitars and we all enjoyed music on the boat. Home by 3. Again.

Not exactly what I'd been envisioning this night to be like for the last 21 years, but it was great nonetheless.