Busy Day Ashore

Today we had two, yes two activities scheduled.  Early afternoon saw us at a performance of Ma’Ceo.  Bicki and Bobbi though it would be fun, I said I wasn’t going unless Bicki’s husband Dave was going (thinking I was safe) but it turns out he was going so that dodge didn’t work.   I didn’t think I would like it, expecting it to be too circus like but actually enjoyed the show.

The only decent picture we have of the show. The rest are a bit blurry due to the low lighting and all the action.

They had the worlds strangest ticket pricing structure.  The Mate found some $20 discount coupons at the Chinese restaurant for mezzanine seating.  The “normal” price for these tickets was $42, so paying $22 wasn’t terribly out of line.  General seating was $31, and Ringside seating was $80 unless you wanted the VIP experience (glass of wine and meet the horses) for $101.  Kids mezzanine seats were $31 but you couldn’t use the discount coupon for the kids seats.  Since we also went with our grand niece Maddy and her father Matt the drill was to purchase an “adult” ticket for Maddy rather than a kids ticket, saving $9 in the process.  The Ringside seats were about twenty feet in front of where we sat and there didn’t seem to be any difference between general seating and the mezzanine seating as all the seats (elevated bleachers) were the “mezzanine”.

If you don’t have access to a live performance, you can watch one of their similar shows by clicking on this youtube link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb7x6SWZxWQ

Late in the afternoon we had company for dinner.  Our former neighbor in Erie, Margaret, had moved to St. Pete a few years ago to be near her mother who had previously re-located here.   We had contacted her a number of days ago, inviting her over for a salmon dinner.  At that time she mentioned that she had a guest room that we could stay in if we wanted to get off the boat.  We politely declined.  Actually, Margaret thought that we were cruising the boat that we occasionally worked on in our driveway, our J22 sailboat, so she was surprised when she arrived and saw Liberty.  That explains why she thought we might want to stay ashore.  If we were cruising a 22′ boat we would most certainly want off as soon as possible.   It was good to see her again and catch up on activities in our lives.  Margaret had a medical practice in Erie that was all consuming and we thought she would retire when she moved to Florida.  Actually she is working three days a week but doing it on her terms.  She has taken up the cello but her recently adopted cat makes her practice in the guest room.  We understand as the ships mascot occasionally dictates activities on this packet.

Dave

 

 

Very Little Excitement

The weather kept us “indoors” earlier in the week.  We had almost two full days of continual rain.  One day we received 1.2 inches, we are not sure how much it rained the previous day.  If you are looking for any leaks in the decks or cabin, these would have been the days to do it.  We didn’t find any so maybe we have this boat buttoned up for the moment.  Of course there was almost no wind so that means the rain was coming straight down.  All bets are off when it is a wind driven rain as that will find its way around any opening.  We had dinner reservations (early bird dinner in true cruiser/retired fashion) on Thursday just as the rain was thinking about clearing out.  We set off and before we had  gone more than a few hundred yards our pants, shoes and heads were soaked in spite of hats, light rain jackets and an umbrella.  We turned around and headed back to to boat, abandoning the mission, calling the restaurant to cancel our reservations.  The inside of the boat was began to look a bit shabby with with wet clothes, shoes and jackets spread out everywhere.  Of course nothing was going to dry as the humidity inside the boat was the same as outside, pretty much 100%.  Eventually, the rain began to subside so we decided to give it another go.  We really had our heart set on the flat rate $15 dinner which included salad, entree and desert.  Drinks were at happy hour prices so how could you go wrong.  This time we wore complete foul weather gear; bib bottoms and jackets and carried an umbrella.  The skipper also wore his sea boots, deciding that fashion takes a back seat to staying dry.

After a very nice meal we went over to the Dali Museum which is a short walk from the boat to view the paintings of the wildly eccentric artist.   Thursdays are $10 days (after 5 PM), normal prices are $24.  It was well worth the $10 admission fee, $24 seems a bit steep.  My guess is there isn’t much activity there during the day, but it certainly was crowded on Thursday evening.

A Dali painting. They had free audio guides, essentially a cell phone with a head set. The number on the wall is used to determine which narration you will hear using the guide. It is really necessary as otherwise you can’t put this painting in context.

This is the transom of a boat down the dock from us. The graphic is obviously inspired by one of Dali’s famous paintings, The Persistence of Memory.

Today, the mate is away, staying overnight with niece Lea and her family while the skipper is at play.  This is assuming that you define play as varnishing large expanses of the saloon and galley sole.  It is a good thing we only have one person aboard as we have no galley or saloon access for awhile.  The forward cabin is accessible via the pilot house, the head can be entered with some acrobatics.

Prepping the sole for some more varnish.

The large, wood (50+ foot) powerboat across the fairway from us is obviously being kept afloat by its bilge pump.  Today we noticed it cycling more often than before.  The pump discharges a pretty good stream of water for 45 seconds before shutting down.  Three and one half minutes after stopping, it start pumping water overboard again.  There is a couple that lives aboard and they must know it is cycling quite regularly as the owner was peering over the side watching the pump operate.  I hope they have a large battery bank to power this thing in the event of an electrical outage.  I wonder where the nearest travel lift is or even if this boat can be moved under its own power, a once proud boat that seems to be on borrowed time.

Even though we are near the end of the pier, occasionally people come by, look us over and invariably make comments.  We were below when a few people stopped then walked out on our dock, talking among themselves.  We heard one ask when they thought Liberty was built.  Somebody guessed that the boat was ten years old, being built about 2006.  Little did they know they were off by 18 years.  She is 28 years old, dating from 1988 and probably has a few more good years left in her assuming that somebody keeps throwing money and man hours at her.

Dave

Another Movie Day

Today we hit the cheap popcorn and pop movie place (Tuesday’s only) to watch “Joy”.  Since the move started at 3:50 we weren’t able to get the cheaper 4:00 to 5:30 rate and had to pay $8 (Senior Citizen).  We only ordered one $2 popcorn to split this time as we still aren’t ready for our own. We really didn’t know what the movie was about, and it turns out that it is a move about our mop.

Our “miracle mop”. Actually it is a knock off as the patient on the original expired about six years ago.

Well, the movie was not exactly about the mop but about the woman who invented the mop and what it took to get the mop to market.  If you are a HSN fan you probably have seen Joy Mangano hawking her “inventions” on this show.  It turns out the movie does a pretty good job of documenting her success story.   After the movie we stopped at the Chinese place for tonight’s dinner (carryout, which will also feed us tomorrow).  For the first time in quite a while we have been able to eat on the boats veranda as the temperature was 67 degrees at 1930 hours.  We would have been able to have a cocktail on the fly bridge this evening except for the fact we can’t get up to the boat deck.  The skipper took down the access ladder so we could varnish the trim at the access hatch.

We used our best paper plates for tonight’s dinner on the back deck.

The circus is coming to town. This tent was erected in the last few days across the basin from us.

Joe, who owns the Pilgrim Hippokampos (Hull 30, ex Sea Bear II) stopped by for a quick visit yesterday.  Their recently purchased boat is on the hard in New Hampshire, a ways away from their home in the Louisville KY area.  Joe was on his way to a TrawlerFest diesel seminar in Riviera Beach and plans on stopping by for lunch on his way home next Monday.

Bicki and Dave had to return their saloon to it’s designed configuration (from the paint shop operation they have been running as of late) as they were having guests over on Sunday afternoon.  Before they “trashed” it again we were invited over for dinner on Monday evening and took the opportunity to check out the status of their project.

Cummins 4BT (sans a bunch of parts) in the engine room of Nellie D.

It is amazing how just moving a “few” things around so you can work on something makes a real mess on a boat.  Everything has it’s place and there aren’t a lot of options on where to put something if you move it.  We are still working on our varnishing, both interior and exterior.  We have a issue with our expensive spar varnish skinning over in the can once it is opened.  Having tried stuff such as Bloxygen (inert gas) that is sprayed into an opened can to prevent air from contacting the varnish unsuccessfully we thought that maybe putting the varnish in small containers that had little space for air might be the hot ticket.

We purchased some 8 ounce bottles at the Dollar Store ($1 for three) to store our unused varnish.

The advantage of the squeeze bottle is that we can apply the varnish directly to a surface if it is windy (a trick we learned when painting the boat deck) or directly to our brush.

The weather forecast for the next day or so is for rain (1 to 2 inches) and staying warm, but not windy.  Being on this dock is almost like being at anchor as there are almost no other people on this dock that stay aboard their boat at night.  For that matter, there are very few people that come down to their boat during the day.  Now that we think about it, it is pretty much like our dock on the west wall of the EYC five days a week.

Dave

More Varnish

The varnish work continues, although very slowly.  The boat isn’t all that big and when you are staying aboard it isn’t easy to varnish places on the cabin sole that you aren’t going to need to walk on shortly.  This means that we can only do certain areas and have to hopscotch around the boat.

Pilot House sole.

After the varnish is applied, it will dry to a satin finish.  We mask off the areas to remind us where we can safely walk.

The good news is that when we are finished with an area, it doesn’t really look any different than before we started. Anybody who deals with varnishing knows the time to varnish is before it obviously needs it, otherwise it is already too late.  We went for a walk into town to let the polyurethane set up and the fumes disperse.  The Minwax brand we use on the interior is fast drying, a real advantage in close quarters.  During our walk we came across a pizza place that had lunch special; two pieces of pizza and a can of soda for $5.  We bought it back to the boat and there was enough to feed both of us as two pieces were really 1/3 of a large pizza.

Today we needed to wait for a line of thunderstorms to pass through before heading out to a lunch at a rather good Mexican restaurant with our cruising friends from Nellie D,  Bicki and Dave before the girls ran out to visit a number of stores.  Since we all know that cruising is defined as working on your boat in exotic locations they are obviously more proficient than us since they chose to tear down their engine to paint it while they are here :).  We are simply piddling around with some sandpaper and a varnish brush.  At the moment we are watching the snow cover the mid section of the Atlantic coast.  Here, the winds have shifted into the West at 25 to 30 knots and temperatures are supposed to be in the 50’s for the the next few days.  Glad we are at a dock.  Isn’t cruising exciting?

 

 

Movie Night

Niece Lea came down to the boat early Tuesday afternoon and her and the mate went out to celebrate Lea’s birthday.  They went to Hofbrauhaus (German restaurant) for lunch then to New York Nails for a manicure and pedicure.  Sounds like fun but the skipper stayed on the boat and did some more varnishing.

Lunch at Hofbrauhaus

Movie night for us is actually movie afternoon.  At the local theater (19 theaters and one I-max), Tuesdays movies from 4:00 to 5:30 cost $5.75 and popcorn is $2.  We saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens but had to pay an additional $3.50 up charge each for the 3-D glasses as we watched (obviously) the 3-D version.  The IMAX version would have been an additional $5.50/ticket.  You could also pay an additional $8/ticket to sit in a “D-box” which is a seat that vibrates and moves around a bit depending on what is happening on the screen.  They had a demo seat in the lobby that we tried but weren’t suitably impressed.  Besides, if I am trying to sleep, I don’t want to be jostled awake. 🙂  Not being a professional movie critic I found the film to be OK, but after all the hype it received was expecting something better.  I just must not be a dyed in the wool Star Wars fan.  The $2 popcorn was a real deal, so to speak.  We could have easily split one but Bicki and Dave each ordered their own so we did likewise.  There was no need to eat dinner after the movie.  As a matter of fact, it might be a while before I eat popcorn again.  There were a total of twelve people in the theater including us, I counted them.  That is my kind of crowd.

Today was a varnish/laundry type of day and after that was finished we went for a short boat ride since it was dead, flat calm.  The boat hadn’t been moved in over a week and it doesn’t hurt to exerciser her a bit to keep any growth from building up on the bottom, the prop and the thrusters.

First stop was the fuel dock were we topped off our tanks with 40 gallons of diesel at $2.42/gallon. A check of total fuel usage at this stage (about the 1/2 way point) shows us to be using 1.75 gallons/hour, including genset and diesel heater.

As the fuel dock is in the Central Yacht Basin we swung by Nellie D. where we interrupted Dave and Bicki’s engine painting project.

We believe Dave was working in the engine room; note the knee pads. Bicki either wears a white apron while painting or is running a butcher shop aboard the boat.

A quick ride out into the crab pot field that is outside the harbor here just to run the engine at cruising RPM’s for a few minutes and then back to the dock completed our outing.  We headed for Publix for a few essentials (salmon and wine), and non essentials (strawberry shortcake fixings) completed the afternoon.  Bicki and Dave  hobbled over for a bit of wine and shortcake this evening after their “chores”.  The high temperature for today was in the mid 60’s, tomorrow it is supposed to be in the low 70’s.  There are more temperature fluctuations here than we expected.

Tonight’s sunset

Dave

St. Pete Activities

Saturday morning we hit the rather large farmers market that was adjacent to the marina.  They were selling “raw” honey (is there any other kind?) and organic dirt.  Really.  We had some visitors over the weekend, our niece Lea and her daughter Maddy came down from Tampa and spent the afternoon with us and stayed the night aboard.  The ladies visited the local playgrounds (for Maddy) and stopped at Publix.  The skipper spent the afternoon re-wiring the solenoids that control our anchor windlass.  When we installed the new windlass with a dedicated battery the foot controls for the windlass were always “hot”.  That is a dangerous situation as somebody could inadvertently activate the windlass while on the front deck.  We want to be able to be able to raise the anchor from inside the pilot house if necessary and also control whether or not the foot switches are live though the use of a toggle switch in the pilot house.  So as it now stands, the foot switches get their power from the house bank and the windlass gets it’s power from the dedicated battery.  This requires that both systems are functional for the system to work, but it is a necessary evil.  After dinner on the boat (steaks and a Key Lime pie that Lea had made) the ladies played “Fish” while the skipper took in a football game below.  The weather has been interesting over the last couple of days and Lea and Maddy picked a “fine” night to stay aboard.  The rain and wind picked up after midnight and by dawn 2.3 inches of rain had fallen with winds on Tampa Bay in the 30+ knot range rolling us around a bit in the marina.  Sarasota, about 25 miles south of us saw two tornadoes touch down.

“Farmers” market. There were a few places selling vegetables although Florida is not known for having small farms.

All that rain tested our newly caulked house joint and we can say that is fixed, but we “found” two other leaks.  One was in the center of the skylight in the saloon which did a good job of soaking the edge of the settee that was pulled out to make a double berth for our guests.  There isn’t much that can be done about that as the problem is with the design of the skylight itself.  Running down the center is a shallow gutter that obviously overflowed.  The Sunbrella cover on the skylight has lost most of its waterproofing qualities allowing water through it.  We need to order some 3M 303 Fabric Guard to restore the waterproofing.  The other leak was above our berth in the forward stateroom that we noticed a week or so ago.  Out came the hose and we traced this leak to an empty screw hole that was behind the fake vent on the front starboard side of the pilot house.  It is only in certain conditions with a hard rain hitting the boat as a critical angle that the leak would occur but we have that one fixed now.

Walking down the dock after all the rain and high winds we came across this large powerboat that had been lifted above the dock uprights by the abnormally high tide. When the water receded the upright was doing its best to tear the rail off the boat. We could hear the fiberglass groaning and cracking as the boat rocked in its slip. We called the marina to report it as there was no way we were going to try to get a real big powerboat off that post single handed.

Today the mate went down the street to watch the rather long Martin Luther King Jr. parade that went along the waterfront while the skipper removed the starboard pilot house door in order to do a proper varnish job on it.

Being here is reminiscent to being back at the EYC. The St. Pete YC sailing classes are held in the basin on the other side our our slip, just like home.

If we were in Erie, this varnishing would be done in our basement during the winter. It still needs to be done although varnishing here is not as convenient.

Bicki and Dave came over this evening where we served them a salmon dinner in honor of their 33rd wedding anniversary.  Their engine painting project is coming along although they are forced to sleep in their pressurized stateroom to keep the paint fumes at bay.  Needless to say they don’t have heat as they are continually pulling in outside air.  While the high temperature was in the low 60’s today, tonight it will be in the low 40’s.  When I checked Erie they had 18 degrees and 8 inches of snow today so we are not going to complain.

Dave

Taking it easy in St. Pete.

Today we are simply taking it easy, something you are supposed to do when you are retired and cruising.  Yesterday was a fairly productive day in the sense that we found and fixed our leak.

Out came the hose and we directed it on the most likely spot that would be leaking.

There was a hairline crack in the caulking around the trim piece and it is hard to believe that such a tiny crack could be the source of our leak but in a few seconds water was pouring below.  It is real easy to see the leak now that we have removed a bit of the cabinetry.

Removing the trim there is an opening almost 1/2″ wide where the pilot house and forward cabin house pieces meet (or don’t meet in this case).

When we removed the trim piece we found the culprit.  There was absolutely no calking between the house sections.  At least they were constant when they built the boat as the port side had exactly the same issue.  When we purchased the boat the woodwork in the hanging locker on the port side of the forward stateroom was totally destroyed by a similar leak.  We found the problem, pumped it full of caulking and then replaced the trim with Starboard rather than re-use the piece of painted teak.  That location hasn’t leaked a drop since we fixed things.  Actually there were two leaks in that area, one from the vertical seam and the other was from the deck power outlets that were originally located in this area.  We relocated the power outlet to the side of the house rather than the step in the deck to remedy that issue, and make it easier to plug in shore power cords.

We knew we had a starboard side leak but when we removed the power outlet from under the starboard deck step we thought we had solved the problem and probably did to a point.  The wet wood in the area dried out and as long as there was no moisture around the rot was held at bay.  The reason we didn’t replace both pieces of trim with Starboard at the time was twofold.  The first was that we didn’t have an issue on the starboard side and the second was that we used our last piece of 1/2″ Starboard on the port side.  As you have to order a sizable chunk of it to make it worthwhile we were loath to spend the money on something that we didn’t really need.   Anyhow, since then and recently the bedding on the trim was doing it’s job, but not anymore.  To fix it we did exactly the same thing we did before, and that is to pump almost 1/2 tube of caulking,  PL (Loctite) polyurethane window and door sealant, into the joint before re-attaching the teak trim.  The trim isn’t all that pretty at the moment as we had to grind the paint off it to find the plugs, and dig them out to locate the screws.  This will get replaced with Starboard, but not for a while unless we find some locally.

It really rained through early morning and we didn’t get a drop below so we believe we fixed the issue.  Now we just need to fix the paneling in the stateroom to pretty it up.

Yesterday the Mate decided to experiment with a new dinner recipe, a one skillet lasagna dish.   Who better to try it out on than our friends Bicki and Dave, so we had them over for dinner.  Of course guests are usually too polite to complain but they cleaned their plates (if we had a dog you would swear that Dave had the dog lick his plate clean).  Maybe they thought they wouldn’t get any dessert (Peanut Butter Pie) if they didn’t eat all their dinner.  Actually it was really good and simple to make.  We had it for dinner again tonight (leftovers).

Not being big movie people, and probably being a bit behind the times we spent last evening watching Star Trek, the 2009 version that our kids got us for Christmas.  In undergraduate school the drill was to spend part of the evening watching the original Star Trek series, (re-runs), before hitting the books so we have always been Star Trek fans of sorts although we have probably only seen two of the movies over the years.  Once again I thought the move we were watching had only been recently released.  It was if you consider seven years ago recent.  Heck, it was only the day before yesterday that I was an undergrad, or was that actually 42 years ago?

After a two mile walk along the waterfront this morning with temperatures finally reaching the low 70’s we returned to the boat for a late brunch.

The rest rooms along the waterfront are pretty classy, at least on the outside.

The north yacht basin here has a mooring field. Unfortunately, when it blows out of the east this place gets really rocking as the waves reflect off the concrete sea wall that surround the place.

Our reward for a walk well taken.  French toast and a cheese omelet.

As we are relaxing today we re-watched Star Trek again as there are quite a few thing you miss the first time through.  It is either that or the fact that we are not “trained” in the art of movie watching and can’t keep track of everything that is going on and how everything relates together.

Tonight we are going to watch the sequel that we can stream from Amazon.  Evidently Star Trek into Darkness was only available on Netflix (we have a subscription) for about six months.

Dave

St. Pete Fun and Games

The skipper really hasn’t been able to wonder St. Pete yet as he has been “busy”.  The day we got in our LNVT friends Bicki and Dave stopped by in the evening to welcome us “back” and invited us to dinner on Monday aboard their boat.  We spent spent part of the day on Monday finishing the gang plank while the mate started to catch up laundry.  It turn out the dryer runs for one full hour for the princely sum of $0.75 and really drys the clothes.  We have no immediate use  for the gang plank as we are only about eight inches off our dock, but Dave and Bicki are able to make good use of it.  It just goes to show that when cruising, if you don’t need something, somebody else does, or if you don’t have something you need somebody else can probably produce it.

The gang plank in use on Nellie D. The plank is four feet long so with out it you have to almost make the pier head leap to get aboard. That is the closest Nellie D can get to the dock as the piling is set outside of the dock itself. It is a good thing they gave them a cut rate price for this slip.

After washing the salt off the hull before it stained our green stripe we headed over to Nellie D (about a fifteen minute walk) for cocktails and then dinner with Bicki, Dave and Alice (prior 49′ LNVT owner).  It was then back to Liberty for desert.  We now know who Alice is; you would have had to hear the song to understand that statement.

Tuesday, the Mate was off to Sarasota with Bicki and Alice as Alice needed to continue her travels while the skipper finally mounted the engine gauges in the fly bridge.  We had made up the new Plexiglas mounting panel in Erie and “only” had to re-cut the fly bridge opening to mount it.  That project took about two hours because it is on a boat.

We probably want to add some green acrylic to protect the white plastic gauge enclosure from the sun before the UV gets it.

After doing a few other odd jobs like soaking our Aquadrive in Boeshield T-9 to keep it from rusting we headed over to Nellie D to check out their engine re-painting project.  This isn’t just a hit it with some spray paint, it is a full blown remove everything (heat exchanger, starter etc.), acid etch and re-paint job including rerouting/replacing all the electrical wires.  Of course you need to clean and paint the bilge while you are at it because you can’t have a pretty engine and a grungy bilge.  While we were there we volunteered to help pull a two of the 8D batteries out of the boat.  8D’s weigh about 150 lbs each and since they are on a boat they are usually positioned in an almost inaccessible spot.  These were no exception.  One needed hoisted about four feet though a hatch in the pilothouse sole.  While a twenty year old could have probably done the job, it took two “men” (average age of about sixty) to accomplish the same.

Last evening the Mate was complaining (with good reason) about the moldy/mildew smell that was quite noticeable on her side of the berth in our forward cabin.  The boat had a leak on the starboard side in that region that we thought we had fixed.  While we knew some of the plywood cabinetry was a bit punky in that area it seemed to be staying dry of late and really had no odor issues.  That was until recently.  Ever since we got back from up north after Christmas there was the odor that wooden boat owners know far too well.  I assume that the pounding that we gave the old girl in the Delaware Bay and on the Albemarle Sound might have stressed her a bit, probably causing the pilot house components to shift a bit, allowing water to leak in a joint.  The other day it rained like crazy and we had a leak right over the head of our berth, something we have never seen before.  We need to get the hose out and find out exactly what needs re-bedded and fix it, but back to our story.  I promised to look into things today, so I did; with my trusty Fein Multimaster, a great tool for doing surgery on wood structures.

Removing some trim, we found a bit of evidence of some rot.

As we delved deeper and started to remove more paneling we were finding more rotten wood.

This stuff smells as bad as it looks. The only solution is removal.

The end result. Patching it will be fairly easy although we now can see how the boat was built. If we have to we believe we can remove the entire cabinet intact as it was built as a unit and then installed over the top of the liner (the white fiberglass that in under/behind it.

While researching mold mediation on the internet we learned that the best thing to use is Tea Tree Oil, the active ingredient in the highly touted Kanberra brand mold/mildew neutralizer.   We did order some of that stuff from Amazon a few days ago (8 oz for $33) but find that you can purchase the concentrate at a pharmacy for about $12/oz (undiluted).  As we needed to get to Publix today we could stop at pharmacy that was across the street.  You mix one teaspoon of the stuff with eight ounces of water and apply it with a spray bottle.  CVS had a buy one, get one free offer so we now have a lifetime supply.  The Mate claims that things are now much better on her side of the berth.

Our Pilgim friends in Annapolis, Dave and Mary checked out the Pilgrim Thin Blue Line at Herrington Harbor North for us.  Dave was kind enough to fill out my Excel check sheet related to items on the boat and also took 290 pictures for us to examine.  The net result is there is no way that we would consider bringing that boat up the New Jersey coast on her own bottom, she would need to be delivered by truck.  Actually, I don’t believe we even have to think about how she would get to Erie given her condition and what they are asking for her.  I very quickly made a list of how we would spend $20k in materials/parts to put her right (assuming the engine didn’t need a nickle spent on it) and don’t even want to think of the man hours required.

We came across this “liveaboard” on one of the other docks. Yes, somebody actually does live on the boat.  It costs this person about $450/month which includes electric, obviously cheaper than a small apartment.

Waterfall “art” on our way to Publix. It probably is real pretty with the sun shining on it although the sun was noticeably absent today.

The Mate says “hi”.

Dave

 

St. Petersburg Municiple Marina

0745 hours saw us leave the dock this morning.  Winds were from the north west at 12 to 15 knots which wasn’t enough to make things uncomfortable although we rolled around a bit heading into Tampa Bay.

I guess we shouldn’t have been here but our friends know we are really rebels.

The deserted restaurant yacht club.  If we had been here a week ago, we could have seen our other Pilgrim friends Bill and Judy, owners of Dreamboat Annie who traveled by here by car.

Yesterday, on our way through Venice we spotted a couple waving to us as they stood on the bow of their Nordic Tug.  The boat looked very familiar, since it was docked stern to (bow out) we weren’t able to see the name but looked like Black Tie, who we last spied as we were leaving Fort Pierce.  We had met the owners in Macedon Landing, NY on the Erie Canal when we had stopped to visit with Henry and Ann, owners of the Pilgrim Caprice.  Today we received a picture from them (below) so it turns it the boat was Black Tie.

Liberty going through Venice. Photo by Grant and Bette Gillette.

We got in about noon and got our paperwork squared away for our months stay here.  Since we are at the dock and our “adventures” will be few and far between there probably won’t be daily updates.  Just as when we stayed in Key West the blog postings might be fairly sporadic; and then again, maybe not.

Our dock for the next month.

Our location in the marina, circled in red.

Today:  27 miles in 4.3 hours.  Total: 2561 miles.

Dave

North Longboat Key Anchorage/Dock

Fog kept us from wanting to hurry from our protected anchorage this morning.  That and the fact that we only planned on going about thirty five miles to the mooring balls at Marina Jacks in Sarasota.

We passed this fine craft on the way. She probably was a handsome boat when new, being a junk rigged schooner.

Passing through the canal outside of Venice.

As we approached Sarasota the winds were out of the South at 15 knots.  We eyeballed the mooring field and decided that we didn’t want to sit out there and roll around for hours.  The wind was supposed to slowly clock around to the west and then the north west but that wasn’t until overnight.  As it was early afternoon we figured we could make the Manatee River that is at the entrance of Tampa bay.  The anchorage there is well sheltered from southerly and westerly winds.  Less than ten miles from our new destination the Coast Guard began issuing a marine warning for the waters we were in telling mariners to take shelter as some severe weather was moving in off the Gulf.  Longboat Key was less than five miles away and was just off the ICW channel so we decided to put in there.  Active Captain comments indicated that a good portion of the anchorage was taken by deteriorating boats and that was a pretty fair assessment.  There were a few transients, but it was crowded.  As the weather was closing in fast we decided to anchor just off the channel.  Not more than a few minutes after we dropped our anchor (in a hurry I might add) the rain closed in.  The anchor seemed to be holding OK but when the wind shifted 180 degrees we found our stern swinging just a few feet from a crab pot float.  We watched a large catamaran abandon the anchorage and take a spot on a nearby dock.  There is a restaurant there and in theory you can tie up there while you eat and might be able to stay the night.  During a break in the rain we picked up our anchor and also tied up to the end of the dock figuring that even if they charged us to stay it would be worth it.  It turns out the place was sold and shut down last July so at the moment is abandoned.

Tomorrow we will be underway early, and since we only have about twenty five miles to go to St. Pete we should get in around noon.

The scribble above Current Track was us swinging back and forth at anchor before rotating around 180 degrees. We then retrieved our anchor and went into the dock.

Today:  51 miles in 7.3 engine hours.  Total: 2533 miles.

Dave