Beautiful St. Pete's

We’re still “on the hook” in Vinoy Basin on St. Petersburg’s beautiful waterfront. There's lots of parks and fountains; the trees are lit with little white lights at night - I love it. SO different from where we're usually anchored. No updates to share, just some pictures of the area. This is the anchorage we’re in. It’s called Vinoy Basin because that pink building in the background is the Vinoy Resort and Hotel.

We learned a little about the history of it from the trolley driver. It was built in the 1920s when a suite cost $15 per day which included three meals - those were the days! During World War II it was used to house troops during training and the hotel kitchens were used to train kitchen staff for the military. Then it was vacant for 13 years and was nearly demolished. It was rescued in the 1980s and restored to its' original beauty.

There’s a free red trolley that just goes to The Pier and back and another blue one, “The Looper" (we got a kick out of that). It gives you a narrated 30-min. tour of the downtown for a quarter. Here’s a few more sights we saw along the way:

This is the view from the 5th floor observation floor of The Pier. It's a long walk so the free trolley ride was very welcome!

This is a view of our anchorage at Vinoy Basin from the observation deck.

This was a new one on us, a floating chapel. It's rented out for weddings and starts at $795 per outing. It has stained glass windows and everything but doesn't look at all seaworthy. I'd love to see it out on the water.

We’re especially enjoying the 72 degree day after seeing on the internet that Wisconsin is having horribly cold weather. Green Bay was ONE degree with winds high enough to make the wind chill about 40 BELOW ZERO! Schools were closed to keep the little ones from freezing going to and from school. It seems so strange to hear about that and here we are, sitting on the boat in shorts enjoying perpetual summer. Sometimes it doesn't seem possible that we actually brought our boat all the way from Wisconsin and are now in Florida – almost surreal but we like it.

This was a little joke from the trolley driver. He said this the newest State Bird - Florida Cranes! They seem to be quite abundant.

This is Paul getting a drink at the Fountain of Youth. We'll have to wait and see if it worked!

We even got to see a fireworks show last night. We don't know what the occasion was but it was very cool! We know Ginger is getting a bit deaf as the noise didn't faze her that much! We plan to be here until Saturday or so. More later... love to all.

Tarpon Springs to St. Petersburg

This is the first time we've had reliable internet service in awhile so I'm updating the blog before it goes away. Sunny Florida hasn't lived up to its' name lately. We had rain in Tarpon Springs, rain and fog in Clearwater and rain in Gulfport. Today we're in St. Petersburg and the sun is shining - yay!




Heading from Tarpon Springs toward Clearwater we stayed on the ICW. One of the bridges we encountered was the Dunedin-Honeymoon Island Bridge.






As we neared Clearwater, we saw pirates! This is "Pirates Ransom" out of Clearwater.


The fog erased some of the Clearwater Memorial Causeway Bridge and made this high rise building float in the clouds! Paul's brother Jim got a rental car in Clearwater and drove back down to Bonita Springs. Thanks again Jim! We were at the Municipal Marina in Clearwater for two nights at $2/ft. Then we got a tip from a local boater and stayed for two nights at a public dock behind a restaurant. He said most people think it belongs to the restaurant but it doesn't. We need to find more of those!

We anchored the next night near Madeira Beach. On Saturday, we continued on the ICW into Boca Ciega Bay. We got a slip at Gulfport Marina for one night since the weather got nasty, then anchored just off Gulfport the next night. We only had a 3-hour trip from there to St. Petersburg.

This is "The Pier" on the waterfront in St. Petersburg. We need to dinghy over there and check it out. Evidently there's an aquarium, gift shops, galleries and several restaurants.

This is a crab fisherman hauling up one of his traps (or pots). Below is the minefield of crab pots we encountered coming into St. Petersburg.

The Crossing

The weather wasn’t great last Thursday but we knew it wasn’t going to get any better for a few days so we decided to go for it and left at 11:11am. We’d been at Scipio Creek Marina for five days and felt that was a couple days too long already. Besides we’d already eaten at Papa Joe’s. Evidently you haven’t experienced Apalachicola if you haven’t eaten at Papa Joe’s Oyster Bar and Grill. Our dock was adjacent to the restaurant so we almost had to go there once. We could only get wifi service by taking our laptop up to the marina office and the shower/bathroom facilities were pretty crummy, so we were ready to go. Paul’s brother, Jim, had joined us on Monday for the trip across the Gulf of Mexico. He has owned several sailboats in the past, so it was great to have another experienced crewman on board. Em was especially happy to have him along so she didn’t have to be out in the cockpit during the coldest part of the night!



We had one bridge to clear in Apalachicola Bay. The channel heading out to the Gulf must have silted in from the storms earlier in the week because we definitely hit the bottom IN the channel (again). Heading through the Government Cut in St. George Island was pretty exciting. The waves coming through there were huge and the seas were very confused from the stormy weather the previous few days. So we started off with water pouring in under the dodger; we’ve found that when things get soaked with salt water they never really dry out until they’re washed in fresh water.

Our heading was 130 degrees to the southeast with a destination of Tarpon Springs. The wind speed was variable from 15 knots down to 5 knots and the seas were confused and we couldn’t make very good headway by sail alone so we kept the engine running. The winds eventually settled on a 10-15 knot northwesterly direction, primarily off our aft quarter. After trying to use both sails, then the main only, we found just having the genoa partially furled worked the best. The seas were still 5-6 feet with a few bigger ones occasionally passing by so it was a rolling ride. The good thing was the waves were pushing us along so the engine didn’t work too hard to keep our speed in the 6 to 6.5 knot range.

After entering the Gulf of Mexico we didn’t see any boats. We had heard that when it got dark you would be surprised how many lights from other boats you would see, we didn’t see any! We were hoping the moon would be out to help light our way but after flirting with us for a few minutes the clouds obscured the moon. We had a little light coming through the clouds, but not much. The moon went down about 2 am and it was also misting a bit so it really got dark, like pitch black! We have never experienced such darkness before. We just had to have faith that we wouldn’t hit anything, which we didn’t. We did shine our spotlights occasionally, but that really didn’t help very much. Em was reminded of a scripture verse she had found earlier in the week – Psalm 139 verse 12: “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Very comforting!

We were rolling so much because of the wave action it made it difficult to stay down in the cabin for very long without getting a bit queasy, so we all spent most of the night up in the cockpit taking naps when we could. The food Em had prepared for the journey wasn't so appealing somehow and we mostly just had small snacks. Paul and Jim switched off taking turns at the helm every hour or so. We had the autopilot engaged so being at the helm mostly involved monitoring that everything was alright and making minor course adjustments because of the wave action. It was a long night but didn't seem endless like I thought it might. Sunrise was not until 7:25 am and it really didn’t start getting light until about 6:30 am. No gorgeous sunset or sunrise to photo as I had hoped, sorry!

We had also been told to watch out for the floats for crab pots when we got closer to Tarpon Springs. We weren’t too concerned about them when it was dark because the water depth was about 100 feet which we figured was too deep to be placing them. After it got light the water depth dropped to about 45 feet and we started to encounter the floats. We had to dodge them for about 20 miles until we got past Anclote Island, the barrier island near Tarpon Springs. We didn’t hit any floats, but came really close a few times.

We got to our waypoint at Anclote Island at about 11 am having gone 150 nautical miles about 24 hours after leaving Apalachicola. Needless to say for us it was a record for a non- stop trip, about three times the distance across Lake Michigan.

The trip wasn’t over yet, however. We had to travel around Anclote Island to the channel to take us up the Anclote River approximately 5 miles until we actually got to Tarpon Springs. We tied up to the city dock at about 1pm, had lunch and went to bed!


Some of the interesting sights we saw on our way into Tarpon Springs!


This is a statue to honor the sponge fishermen of the area. Tarpon Springs is well known for the harvesting and sale of sponges. There's a heavy Greek influence and tons of Greek restaurants. We enjoyed two of them: Mykonos and Mr. Souvlaki's.

We moved to Anclote Isles Marina on Saturday and have been here the past two nights. Here's some pictures of the extreme low tide due to the full moon and high winds. We think the water will be up enough so we can make it out of here by noon. There was a dandy storm on Saturday night, torrential rains and high winds out of the north so the water was blown right out of the marina! We're heading for Clearwater, FL where Jim will rent a car to go back to the comforts of home. Thanks again Jim!



We got to watch the Packer - Giants playoff game on the boat last night and are bummed along with all the Packer faithful at the outcome. But what an unexpectedly great season they had!

Waiting in Apalachicola

I seem to be fascinated with pelicans for some reason. These are some of the inhabitants of the marina at Port St. Joe. We left there on Sat the 12th headed for Apalachicola. We got to travel via the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) again for the first time in awhile. We knew we could make it under the bridges we'd encounter. First was the 75ft. St. Joe Bridge - no problem. Then we headed into the 5-mile long Gulf County Canal, which dropped us into Lake Wimico. Cap'n Paul had to be very diligent to stay inside the channel as the depths were only about 4ft. outside the channel markers. After the lake, we were on Jackson River, then the Apalachicola River and Apalachicola. We've been docked at Scipio Creek Marina since Saturday afternoon.

This is the view nearing the second bridge we encountered on Saturday, the 65ft. White City Bridge. We knew we could clear it easily but it is rather unnerving looking up at the mast nonetheless.

We rented a car here to travel to Tallahassee on Monday to meet Paul's brother, Jim, who winters in Bonita Springs, FL. He decided he wanted to experience this leg of the trip and was good enough to be our 3rd crew. Jim drove up from Bonita Springs in another rental car and we met at the airport - lots of logistics going on here. We came back to the boat in our rental and that's where we still are. The grand plan was to leave Tuesday AM for the trip across to Tarpon Springs. Being the prudent boaters that we are, however, we decided to wait as the weather reports weren't all that favorable. The wind direction was better, for a change, mostly out of the north but it was predicted to pipe up to 20+ knots after midnight and we weren't feeling real warm and fuzzy about being out in that in the pitch dark. Also it turned quite cool and rain is on the way for sometime Wednesday. So.... we're hanging out here with the new plan to move on to Carrabelle tomorrow and see what our weather window is.

That's the news from the "Restless Wind" for today. I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to post again before we actually leave so thanks for your interest, you faithful blog followers. Think good thoughts for us out there on the big water and keep us in your prayers, please and thank you!

Back in Florida

We arrived back at our floating home on Sunday night, Jan 6th, after a fairly uneventful 2-day drive, again, with no bad weather. We had a great three weeks at home over Christmas with lots of snow. So strange to think that will be the extent of winter for us this year!

We feel like we've been in Panama City forever! On Thursday, Jan 10th, it was time to move on.

Heading out into the Gulf we saw these kites but I couldn't see anyone holding the lines on shore. As we went on I saw why. There were two guys riding some kind of a waterboard attached to the kite. Wow, they were really flying! Much too adventurous for me but it was good to see someone was making good use of the 15-20 knot winds because we sure weren't. Guess where the wind was coming from sailors? Of course, out of the east, where we were headed! We are starting to wonder if we'll ever get the right winds for sailing again!

We were on the water a whole six hours, heading east to Port St. Joe, FL. It was a pretty rough motor trip but it felt good to be out on the water again and since it was around 70 degrees and we're still boating in January, who can complain? Here's a scene as we neared Port St. Joe just before sunset. By the way, we just entered the eastern time zone so sunset is around 6pm now. I'm looking forward to longer days, 5pm was a bit early to be tucked in for the night when it got dark.

This marina is the priciest one we've seen so far: $2.10/ft - yikes! That comes to over $80 per night (although the showers ARE much nicer than we've had since southern Illinois). It really seemed high by comparison to the super deal we got at Sun Harbor in Panama City. The dockmaster, David, didn't even charge us for the four extra days we were there beyond our month contract. We're paying almost as much for the two days here as we did for our whole time there - crazy! Paul's brother, Jim, who winters in Florida, says "get used to it".

We'll continue heading east on the panhandle, heading toward Apalachicola, then Carrabelle where we'll make our Gulf crossing to the western shore of Florida. Hopefully we'll get to watch the Packers beat the Seahawks on TV tomorrow. GO PACKERS!!!