Sam would commit suicide

Tuesday, April 14, 2009, Venice Inlet

Venice is a nice town. The downtown area was close to the marina and we took the bikes to downtown. The downtown area reminds us a lot of Fairhope. There are many small shops with “nice” stuff. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of tourist in any of the downtown area. We were walking thru the parking lot here for the restaurant and noticed that most of the cars are from out of state. Apparently, there was an old military base here and much of downtown is housed in former military buildings. It reminds you a lot of the buildings at Ft McClellan. The streets are wide with parks in between the lanes. It is a shame that more cities don’t have downtown pedestrian areas.

The tour of town was this morning. The afternoon has been watching rainstorms come thru. They got close to an inch of rain. We have been lucky so far. This is the first day we have been slowed down because of rain.

The marina here is convenient to the gulf but I would have a hard time recommending it. The current runs a couple of knots under the boat and today a swell has been rolling around the entrance and up the channel.

We had tried to get into the Yacht Club for dinner but they were having a buffet and bingo night. We told them we would stop in the next time we were this way. There is a restaurant at the marina that stays packed out. We went to eat there tonight and they had a 45 minute wait. I am going to sound like the food editor but I had the shrimp po-boy. All I can tell you is Sam in Pensacola would commit suicide before he would serve a sandwich like the one I had.

Tomorrow it is back to Bird Key Yacht Club near Sarasota. We are looking at the weather for the return trip. Right now, it looks like we have an opening to leave Saturday morning and get into Panama City late Sunday. I look at about five different sites to get my weather information. We compare the sites, average them out, and hope like heck that we make the right decision. The key elements are wind 90 degrees or more off your course, ideal 12 knots or less and waves at some reasonable level.