Monday, December 9th
We left Madeira Beach with 75 degree temps, partly cloudy skies and the current with us for a change so we had a pretty good day heading toward the anchorage selected by the Captain in preparation for our crossing of Tampa Bay. We want to begin that leg early in the day giving us plenty of time to cross the bay entirely in the daylight. We left the batteries with a pretty good charge the night before so it didn't take long to top them off in the morning. We weighed anchor at 9:15 am.
Bridges are a very common site now that we are in the ICW. The Archimedes only requires a clearance of just over 12' so we fit under these 20' clearance bridges with pleny to spare so we don't have to wait for bridge openings. The exception to this are the swing bridges which tend to be around 10' high, forcing us to request an opening.
This is the causeway leading to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay taken from our anchorage this evening. Unfortunately, the sun was not in a good position for taking pictures of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge along with a couple of very large, very white clouds behind it making it impossible to see the artistry of the bridge, so no good pictures of that bridge this day.
Fisherman are out early every morning, all along the GCICW. This is a very common site all up and down the Gulf Coast.
This is our view for most of our traveling to and from the Arc. The tender is a very important part of cruising. Our tender is an 11' Boston Whaler which gets us where we want to go in style as well as taking Radar on his all important shore leave. 
If the birds sitting on a sandbar don't alert you to shallow water ... then pay attention to the signs!
Tuesday, December 10th
We crossed over Tampa Bay with no problems. It was chilly but the sun was shining and we motored on across the bay ending up at Anna Marie Island for the night.
On this trip we found it helpful to use a technique that we call Sun Tacking. Since the Arc can be run faster when we get full sun on the panels, sometimes while crossing a large body of water it becomes advantageous to steer a course that puts the panels in the sun rather than one that takes you straight to where you really want to go. This allows us to run faster and still keep the batteries charged up and even though we might travel a little further, we can get there faster and still have a full battery.
A beautiful sunset at the end of the day.
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