Hooray! We finally got ourselves over to the St Pete marina. Now, don’t get me wrong. Salt Creek Marina is fantastic for what it is (a DIY boatyard, with excellent haul-out facilities, skilled paining crew, and super helpful management) and I highly recommend it. But it is not a particularly desirable place to live long term. So once we got our fuel tank installed and we’re mobile again, we were excited to make the short trip to the marina to experience the live-aboard life and to meet other sailors. Since it was our first time powering up the engine and actually moving the boat, we prepped and reviewed charts and discussed our plans as if we were going to cross the Atlantic.

After a quick 5nm cruise, dock master Doug helped us tie up the the transient dock, and we were in our new home for the month from December 19th to January 20th. That makes it sound very easy …. but being Christmas… and in a popular tourist town … with a massive NYE festival coming up, we only could reserve a spot until Christmas Eve. Then each time our departure day grew near, we had to cross our fingers and hope for a cancellation that would allow us to stay longer. We ended up moving to a new slip four times in that month.

The live-aboard sailors got into the Christmas spirit with an adorable nautical themed tree!