Nov. 27th....
Paul called in the morning to see if we wanted to go boating. We headed over to his place and Gerry,me,Paul,Kathryn and the neighbour Susan piled into the boat. We passed under a bridge that separates the mainland from Snead Island which is quite close to my place. In this channel we spotted a manatee as well as the two fixeruppers you see in the pics below. (one is barely visible and on the left of the bigger one.) We then passed by the Bradenton Yacht Club.
It was quite windy out in the bay so rather than get wet we headed South and up the Manatee River which separates Palmetto from Bradenton. It was quite protected up there and lots of mangrove islands. It would be easy to get lost up there as there are so many channels and islands and it's quite shallow in places as we found out when approaching one of the bridges. This leads us to Capt. Paul's theory of stuckinthe mud. You keep the engines down so when they bottom out you can raise them and power away.
We arrived back at Paul's place around noon and had a bite to eat before setting off to view Stan and Sharons new house by car.

Cruising the Manatee River
Pruned Mangroves


A Fixer Upper
The Bridge where we ran aground
The Bradenton Yacht Club