Key West to Bradenton

So we are a little slack at this whole blogging thing at the moment I know. We have been in Bradenton, Florida nearly a week now. We left Key West on Saturday the 26th the first days sail was really nice. The next day we saw some storm clouds coming in on our radar so we decided to head for as much shelter as we could find and anchor up through the storms. We had some pretty hefty winds and swells, the boat rocked around a fair bit and I felt the need to dose up on sea sickness pills. Unfortunately I have now lost the first to lose there lunch bet! Luckily for us the days where fine and we managed to make allot of ground in the light! We got that for two days in a row and by early morning of the second day I was feeling rather queasy and ready to get going again. We set off and motored the rest of the way to our destination.

We arrived in Brandenton on Wednesday the 30th around lunch time, after securing the boat we all headed for the showers and the pool and spent the rest of our day relaxing. We are staying at Twin Dolphin Marina its a cute place surounded by some cool old buildings and gorgeous beach just down the road.

Bradenton played host to a seafood festival this weekend just been and the waterfront was closed down and made into a tent village. We went down on Friday night to have a look and get ourselves some coconut shrimp skewers and some beers. We gave the festival a miss on Saturday and went to the South Florida Museum, Planatarium and Aquarium where we got acquainted with Snooty the manatee and his tank mate who is there for rehab from a severe frost bite. I'm completely in love with manatees now!

We have got ourselves a rental for the next month and we have been tootling about finding all the local shops. We found another walmart and lost half our day wandering around it. There are some odd people you find in that store, I lost count of the adults wearing PJs wandering about.

We have now settled into maintenance mode and we are getting the boat ready for her trip, we have a whole host of goodies on the way to us at the moment to install. So we will be busy for the time being!

Looking forward to next weekend when my friend Mickey is coming to stay! Just trying to decide what to do.