December 4-5, 2019 – As we were making our way south from Sarasota, looking for a nice place to anchor, we spied a trio of spots that were indicated on the crowd-sourced ActiveCaptain community as being good places to drop the hook. The one at the south-east looked nicely protected, a tiny little bay.
Well, when we got there, it wasn’t quite what we expected; a man-made cove, surrounded by $1M+ homes. According to Google Maps, this was Pelican Bay.
Oh well, in we went, and had a nice base from which to take our dinghy over to the southern tip of Little Gasparilla Island, for a walk on the beach. We came back just before sunset to find that two other boats had joined us there for the night.
The next day we were going to head down to Cayo Costa State Park. Cayo Costa Island is one of a chain of barrier islands that shelter Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound. The park contains nine miles (14 km) of soft white sandy beaches and 2,506 acres (10 km2) of pine forests, oak-palm hammocks, and mangrove swamps. (wikipedia)
It turns out that where we are headed is also called Pelican Bay, but it’s as different as night and day.
Since our trip down took less than two hours, we had plenty of time to explore, and so took the dinghy down to Cabbage Key to get our very own ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’. (The inn there is purported to be the inspiration for the Jimmy Buffett song by that title)
The ambiance was pretty funky, but the burger only so-so.
We met up with some other Loopers on three different boats, that were each exploring various parts of the area. A couple of us went over into a little ‘manatee hole’, a small inlet and pond off Pelican Bay, and rowed our dinghy around and saw a few manatees surface, with just their snouts above water. Very hard to get a picture, though.
Enjoyed a spectacular sunset that night, and the next day made a couple trips over to the beaches, where we continued to add to our shell collection. Ben had to promise that we’d still make a stop at Sanibel, supposedly the mecca for sea shell picking.
Here’s a short drone clip showing At Ease, and other boats, anchored at the real Pelican Bay.