Swing Set: Cruising Full Time
10/06/12Tampa Bay and Apollo BeachWe pulled up anchor on a bright, sunny Friday morning and set a course for Apollo Beach. I took this picture of the famous Don Cesar Hotel in St. Petersburg as we cruised by. (It's the big pink building.) We heard its been renovated. We're happy when landmarks are kept up and not left to decay. Our route to Apollo Beach was only 23 miles, but we decided to take a detour and travel up the western side of Tampa Bay to check out the Vinoy Renaissance Hotel and Marina. As we were tooling along at our normal 8 to 9 miles per hour, the boat in the picture above showed up right next to us with no courtesy call on the radio or honk on the horn. The captain waved, but I would have liked it better had he given us notice. The wake he was throwing was a huge one, but... |
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10/05/12A Few Minutes in St. PetersburgI sure got a lot of response from my last less-than-optimistic blog! Not to worry, no one is giving up. I just was in the mood to provide a balance to our mostly positive experiences, and as I have been reminded, mentioning "balance" and "us" is usually not done in the same sentence. It rained all day while we were in our anchorage near Madeira Beach. The water was cloudy and not very inviting. There were lots of abandoned boats sprinkled around in the harbor, and the dismal surroundings could get to nearly anyone. The rain kept us from visiting our neighbors in the dinghy, as we had wanted to. My one reservation was that most of them kept their boats in a deplorable condition, and it may be unfair to characterize, but a boat's condition tells a... |
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10/03/12Not All Blue SkiesWe are on our second day here in our Madeira Beach anchorage. I can't tell you a whole lot about it because we haven't left the boat yet, and we haven't met our neighbors in here yet either. The three boats in the picture are abandoned. The one in the middle is washed up in the mangroves, and the other two sailboats are now home to a great number of sea gulls and pelicans, having been vessels holding a better future for their owners at some point in the past. We are currently socked-in by rain, with no let up in sight for this day. Not a big deal because the temperatures are cooler, and even though it's raining, there is no associated winds to contend with. Our first night here was a restless one. The winds had us bucking around, and the noise of the waves... |
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10/01/12Tarpon Springs to Madiera BeachWe made the best of our last day in Crystal River by taking Holly in the dinghy to the beach and then over to the Three Sisters Spring for one last time. I also decided, after a good tip from our friend Don at Lake of the Ozarks, to get a new phone instead of a new camera. My old iPhone 3 was acting up, and there is no flash on the camera on that old model, plus the auxiliary jack quit working months ago. Don knew we were headed for Tarpon Springs and located an AT&T store there, so I called them, and after considering the options, had them get an iPhone 4S into the store for me to check out. The 4S is a nice phone and can be gotten at a good discount right now. The camera has a flash, and the best thing about it was that the same connection cords for the 3G can be used for... |
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09/27/12Grocery Shopping 101The propeller we had ordered for the dinghy outboard had to be special ordered and wouldn't come in until next Thursday, a week away. I told the marina to forget it, and they totally understood. I'm glad I called them to find out the status of the prop that was supposed to come in today. I fixed a loose piece of woodwork in our stateroom this morning and cleaned the mold off of the life ring hanging on the flybridge. You can't get too lax around here. We were waiting for high tide, and after lunch we took the dinghy down a canal to where we now knew the grocery store was located. We docked the dinghy at the end of the canal and tied it up against a concrete seawall, but we put our fenders out. Where we docked was so close to the strip mall where the Save-a-Lot was... |
