The Secret Suncoast

Manasota Key lets you get away
without going far away

By Dottie Rutlege and Jim Raycroft • Photos by Jim Raycroft

According to a song by The Beach Boys, the perfect tropical paradise beckons somewhere  “off the Florida Keys,” a place of  “afternoon delights, cocktails and moonlit nights.” Never mind searching for their “Kokomo,” when you get to Manasota Key, you’ve found the place.
We had been exploring the charts in search of a laid back destination for a weekend getaway cruise and came across the little town of Englewood on the southern tip of Manasota Key. At closer look it became even more interesting. Referred to as, “The Gem of the Suncoast,”  and,  “Florida’s Best-kept Secret,” Englewood, a town of about 16,000 residents, is located on the lower east side of Lemon Bay, about 11 miles south of Venice on the Gulf ICW and just north of Stump Pass.
We would be spending this weekend cruising down from Sarasota with Phil Annunziato  aboard a friend’s Ocean Alexander 510, Seaesta. This is fishing country and many of the hotels and guest cottages offer docks for boats in the 25-foot range. There aren’t as many options for a 51-footer, but luckily we discovered Chadwick Cove Marina and Resort opposite the anchorage.

Ray Orozco, a transplant from Detroit owns and operates Chadwick with the help of his daughter. Chadwick’s hosts an interesting collection of transient cruisers and live-aboards and one gigantic Osprey. Ray graciously reserved his face dock for us–which is also his fuel dock. As we slid alongside, it felt like we were pulling into a little hide-away in the Keys and that Beach Boys tune kept running through our heads.
A couple of Ray’s other hats are Taxi Driver and Tour Guide; he’s a one-man auxiliary Chamber of Commerce.  Before we knew it, we were climbing into his truck for the short haul over the bridge to Englewood, a town that dates back to 1894.  Ray dropped us off on Dearborn Street, the heart, soul and business center of this quiet little community. Walk the street and you’ll find the place has a diverse collection of antique shops, local art and crafts offered up at very reasonable prices. There’s even a model train shop, all run by friendly local folks who make you feel at home. We came across sculptor Chris Bowersox whose artistic tool of choice is a chain saw. His Old Englewood Bowersox Art Studio is alive with all sorts of wooden fish and sea creatures. Make a point of finding it—you won’t be disappointed.
Music is a big part of life in Englewood. In addition to enjoying Monday night Bluegrass concerts at the Indian Mound Park, you can drop in and listen to the rehearsal of the Lemon Bay Chord Company, the local chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. Rehearsals are open to the public every Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. in the Christ Lutheran Church Fellowship hall. Even the local hairdresser, Flo, is an accomplished country singer and has concert posters to prove it.
After a couple of hours of antiquing on Dearborn Street it was back to Chadwick Marina and the nearly deserted Gulf beach no more than 100 yards from our dock. When the sun eased past the yardarm, we shuffled on over to the White Elephant, a dock- side bar and restaurant within a stone’s throw of our dock, and ordered up a couple of frosty beers and peel-and-eat shrimp.
In reality, we were only 30 miles south of Sarasota and 50 miles north of Ft. Myers, but sitting on the deck at the White Elephant as the sun went down we could have been a million miles from anywhere. When the local cover band, Caribbean Cowboys,  sang, “That’s where I wanna go—way down to Kokomo,” we felt smug. Like The Beach Boys, we had found our tropical paradise.