Travels of the Confetti

2/19/2011 - 2/22/11  We left Tarpon Springs late morning because it's hard to get out of  Tarpon Landing at dead low tide.  Our mission was to get to Ft. Myers in the next few days to see our friends from Lace's high school graduating class in Fullerton, CA..  We had our service forward our accumulated mail to them so that will be good to get caught up on.  This part of Florida is characterized by "over development" as our cruising guide puts it.  The water is clear and aqua colored, the shore lines tend to be white sand and are lined with homes each with their own boat, and all punctuated with high-rise condos.  There are frequent manatee speed limit zones although we have never seen the first manatee.  We saw no sign of recession here.  Everyone seems to have a boat and the trend seems to be maximum horsepower.  Perhaps it's because this was the first nice weather break this year, but we were struck that the waterways from Clearwater to Ft. Myers were clogged with motor boats, all in a hurry.  At first I was irritated that no one seemed inclined to slow down as they passed which rocked us frequently from their wake  After a while though, I saw that there was so many of them that if they all slowed down for each other, no one would get anyplace. We crossed Tampa Bay, at one point paralleling the famous Sunshine Skyway Bridge and ended up at Legacy Marina which is on the Caloosahatchee River in Ft. Myers.  The Caloosahatchee used to flow out of Lake Okeechobee and it is said that it was a very nice river.  Thomas Edison and Henry Ford wintered in on the river. Now there are locks on the river which prevent the water from flowing out of the lake and into the Gulf. The water is a mysterious shade of black.