cruising life

Our First Night on the Hook

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So marina life is great and all, but it’s not what a blue-water-capable sail boat is designed for. Plus you can get pretty complacent with all that 120V shore power, unlimited potable water, showers and grocery stores a short walk away…. so it is time to test Sanitas’s systems while at anchor off the grid!

We decided to spend a night anchored off Eggmont Key State Park and wildlife preserve. Better yet, we planned to spend it with our new friends Drew and Sharon. We met Drew way back at the St Pete boat-show, when he captained our free sail on Tampa Bay. When introducing ourselves, we realized both our boats were currently located three boat-lengths apart in the Salt Creek Marina! By the end of our three hour tour, we were fast friends and all booked to set sail together for Key West as “buddy boats” on Jan 19th. Crazy! Since then, we have spent several evenings together talking and planning and getting excited for cruising. We even spent Christmas dinner together, and really felt welcomed in their family and home. So the prospect of anchoring out was more exciting knowing that we’d have wine and Euchre waiting for us in the harbor.

Winds were super light, so after a couple of hours of attempting to sail south, we gave up and started the motor. Still fun to ride under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge! (I told Mike, I could have jogged from downtown St Pete to the bridge faster than we sailed there) we had the chance to try lots of boat systems for the first time on this trip:

  • We laid the anchor, and ensured that the 25 ft markings were still in place, and that the windlass worked
  • We used our house battery banks and solar to power our electrical needs. Well mostly. One of the three solar panels never did function.
  • We used our insanely expensive marine quality propane grill for the first time.
  • We used the water maker, aka desalinator, for the first time. Coolest boat gear ever!
  • We hoisted our dinghy, Bug, off the foredeck and into the water and back. And putted a whole 25 yards over to Drew’s boat and back. This was not a graceful project.

A successful trip, if I do say so myself!

Are we allowed to have fun? St Pete Boat Show

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We’ve never been boat owners while attending a boat show before! So we were thrilled to be able to attend the St Pete boat show right in our own town. This show combined sail boats and motor boats, so there was something for everyone. And plenty of opportunities to spend money! We sat in on several seminars and picked up tips on cruising in The Bahamas and Cuba, and learned that we need to order The Explorer Chartbooks by Monty and Sara Lewis to really be confident cruising in the Bahamas and to finding our way around on shore.

Speaking of spending money, we bought our dinghy, Bug, at the boat show. We got a pretty good deal on a 2017 model Achilles HB-240AL. In plain English, that’s a 2.4 meter inflatable dinghy with an rigid aluminum floor. It’s a compromise between big enough to get us from boat to shore, and small enough to fit on the foredeck (with the staysail rigging in place) and light enough for two normal-sized people to load and unload. It’s going to be a slow ride though with our measly 5hp outboard!

The other big attraction of the boat show is the annual cruiser party hosted by Cruising Outpost magazine. Bob and Jody Bitchin (don’t you wish your name was “Bitchin”) bring in live music, kegs of beer, and lots and lots of pizzas and keep the party going after the boat show gates close on Saturday night. Our heads spinning, our wallets lighter, and our spirits encouraged by contact with the cruising community, we returned to the yard and to boat projects.

Our first Visitors!

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It’s been two months since we left Boulder, CO and we’ve definitely had time to miss our friends and family as we attempt to get adjusted to our new lives. In mid-November, we had our strongest supporters show up for a visit – Micki and Nathan!

These guys have believed in us since we first started talking about this crazy sailing dream. And they’ve encouraged us to go for it! Even throwing us a huge boat warming party before we left Colorado.

So maybe we were a little optimistic when we invited them to join us to celebrate putting our boat back in the water and holding a grand renaming ceremony. Huh. Three weeks in St Pete and we still have no fuel tank, no toilet, no dinghy, no…. well everything you need to have a working boat! Good think Micki and Nathan are such good sports! The spent the weekend helping us with boat projects, and may have forced us to get out and experience St Pete a bit – a very welcome break from the boat yard!

Nathan was a trooper, and finished up all of the bilge painting, somehow contorting himself into tiny spaces to make it all work.

And we checked off a big project on our list …. testing the anchor windlass, confirming that all of the anchor chain is in good condition, and marking every 25 feet of chain with a different color, to make it easy to tell how much chain we lay down in an anchorage. Micki helped me let out all 250 feet of chain, markings every segment with colorful plastic zip ties. Zzzzzzz….ippppp that noise always makes us smile!

We had a couple of portlights with torn screens – not acceptable for anchoring in the everglades and other areas where there will be lots of mosquitos! Micki took over the task of measuring, cutting, and shaping the screen frame. Then we cut screen fabric donated by a boatyard neighbor to make perfectly sized screens!

After such significant accomplishments, we deserved a little down time to explore Central Ave in St Pete, including the Emerald Bar and had wonderful charcuterie in the courtyard of our Airbnb.

On the way back to the Tampa airport, we stopped at The Getaway near the Gandy Bridge, and pretended that we were already in the Caribbean with our toes in the sand.

Thank you so much for coming to visit and for helping to make our dreams real!