Saturday April 28: Cayo Casta State Park

Wednesday morning and it was finally time to leave St. Petersburg. It is really a nice marina and city - thoroughly enjoyed our time here.

But one last museum yesterday - the Imagine Museum which traces the history of glass as an artistic medium, starting in the 1960's.

Dale Chihuly was one of the early leaders using blown and fused glass in his work. For information on his work and how he makes these glass pieces, click here. It's really quite fascinating!

Set of Baskets - Chihuly

These are just a sampling of the amazing pieces that are done either blown glass, fused glass or a combination of the two. To explore more of the collection, click here.

And of course we had to have one last lunch at our Thai place!


It was a long (for us) travel day of 50 miles (6 1/2 hours) to Blackburn Bay. Longer than we planned on initially but this put us within reach of Cayo Casta State Park.

The waterway travel and the anchorage was very nice. Of course an anchorage along this coast means you turn right or left off of the ICW until you reach a depth of 5 or 6 feet and toss the anchor. Surroundings will vary from mangroves (not so often) to very nice waterway homes (the usual!).

Off early and of course fishing was on the agenda as we were crossing Charlotte Harbor and Steve typically has good luck picking up a mackerel or two.

Nice size - good for several meals. Man, do I love having
fish every day ......

I even agreed to clean it :-)

We were able to just tie to the dock at the park this time as the docks were finally repaired from Irma. $20 a night - can't be beat!

Cayo Casta beach

This gives us access to the park itself which is great - especially since Steve likes to ride on the many paths around the island and over to the ocean side to the beautiful and empty beach!

For our second night here we anchored so we had easier access to the "manatee hole" by kayak.

We followed a mom and her baby ( which of course means it was only 3 feet long!) into the protected area. There were probably another half dozen around. Always fun to see but having so many visit Banana Bay has spoiled us for sure.

It was not an uneventful night as the wind decided NOT to die down so we ended up moving (before dark - we're getting smarter) to an area that was a bit more protected.

Up early Saturday morning. We were due to be pulled out at 2 pm and we were still a 4 or so hours away from the summer home for Yesterday's Dream.

No fish today - but that's ok  :-)

The weather we've had since we left Banana Bay on April 2 has been, for the most part, perfect. A few windy days here and there but overall we could not have asked for better travel days. A total of 450 miles in the last month.

Tuesday April 24: Another Nice Day in St. Pete's

Finally! We found what sounded like our kind of place – Central Coffee Shoppe – an old fashioned diner. Off we went on the bikes to Central Avenue – the main drag in St. Pete's that is the location of just about everything that is worth seeing/doing.

They even had homemade corned beef hash! Sadly, it was not up to what we expected. No problem, we'll try again tomorrow at a different place. :-)

The plan was to visit the Sculpture Experience after breakfast (it was just a couple more blocks from the boat). Sadly I found out just before we left the boat that it was closed on Mondays. Figures. Anyway since it was just another block or so down the street from the breakfast place, we decided we should ride by it just to verify that it would indeed be open tomorrow.

Steve with Jon Hair

Weird. No hours listed. Even more weird – there were clearly folks inside and the door was not locked! So of course Steve walked in and the owner/sculptor came around the corner.  Turns out that he was just moving into this new place (right next door to the Chihuly museum) and wouldn't open until NEXT Wednesday. Very sad.

I had read about the artist Jon Hair. He was originally from Ohio, went to Ohio State, taught at the U of Akron – regular home town guy. And he was the guy inside working to finish up the displays! Steve shared we were traveling by boat. Oh, where are you from? We said Ohio – seems he grew up in Mansfield and used to ride his bike to Mohican State Park – near Loudonville. My old stomping grounds.

Well, how could he turn away fellow Buckeyes, right? Come on in he said – and procedeed to give us a tour of the place!!

Lion mold for University of Arkansas at
Ft. Smith.

He was quite an interesting person. Went to Ohio State for a degree in Fine Arts, ended up working for an ad agency and at the age of 50 had what he termed was a 'mid-life crisis” and started doing large scale sculptures.

His work is amazing. It includes 2 huge sculptures that stand at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs – which we actually saw when Matt and Wendy lived there for a while. A small model can be seen in the background of the picture below.

Jon explained how the sculptures are made - starting with making a small figure and working from that to make the full size figure mold.

Many of his works are various college mascots with his newest that he is currently working on: the Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina - it is truly amazing. Especially when he explained the process and what goes into making these extra large size sculptures. (Go to his web site to see this sculpture and many more: click here. )

Steve sitting with Mark Twain

Overall a really fun experience. I think I'm going to encourage him to make a video of him explaining the work that goes into making a large sculpture like he makes. I would love a video :-)

Anyway, that was enough for me so back to the boat for a break – after of course we went back to our Thai place for lunch :-) I mean how often do we ever get here?

After lunch Steve decided to ride to the Sunken Gardens. It has a very interesting history being started by a former plumber back in 1903. Basically it had a small lake 10 feet below sea level that he drained and made into a garden. He continued to develop the gardens to a spectacular gem.

The city bought it in 1999 with the goal of preserving what had become a beautiful and unique area a short distance from downtown St. Pete's. For the history, check the website by clicking here.

The Sunken Gardens included a very nice flock of flamingos!

On the way are a series of HUGE banyon trees in one of the parks just north of downtown – very close to the boat. This is one of half a dozen of these tree.

Of course Steve seems to always have something he wants to do or fix on the boat. The other day it was finally time to fix the doors. The wood doors that open into the cabin have strip of very hard plastic (on the bottom of the door) that slides on a strip of stainless steel. After a while, junk builds up on the plastic and makes them difficult to open (think it's the salt water spray along with dirt)

Before

After

A second job that has needed to be done since we bought this boat (so 11 years) is to redo the doors on the flybridge storage area. Really? 11 years? But they definitely look nice now :-)

The many murals of St. Petersburg – just a sampling, of course!

We leave in a couple of days - one more art museum we want to see tomorrow .....

Saturday April 21: St. Petersburg - Plan B - Again!

It happened again. Plan B moved to the forefront when we decided we really wanted to go out for breakfast at the Cortez Cafe. Not that we really had time if we indeed wanted to make it to Caladesi Island (north end of the green line) and arrive at a decent time.

Instead we decided to take a right hand turn at Tampa Bay, follow the orange line and go to St. Petersburg. We've been here several times and really enjoy the area. If storms due in Sunday really show up then this is definitely a better place to be.

So we may skip Caladesi - we need to be at the storage facility on Saturday the 28th for a pull out at 2 pm. Stay here a few more days and head back. It's 2 days back on the blue line to the storage place. We hope to have a night at Cayo Casta again. We'll see.





It's a short bike ride to the cafe and after looking at the specials board, it was a no brainer for Steve: definitely the Greek omlet! He said it was quite tasty ....

We took the long way back through one of the housing developments there - beautiful homes of relatively modest size. In the past we have seen a variety of water birds in the ponds there but nothing unusual out this morning.

Back to the boat and off by 10. It'll be a much shorter day and we expected to arrive around 1 pm. It was very fortunate for us that a boater had canceled this morning - otherwise the downtown marina would have not had a space for us.

The boating gods were with us ....

The Tampa Bay Bridge is a beautiful bridge - probably more so when driving over it but still fun to see from the water. Steve of course was trailing his fish lines. He caught a small spanish mackerel (threw it back) and had two others on the line. One was a good two feet but we couldn't get either one into the boat. Maybe we should use the gaff instead of trying to net the larger ones. We'll think on that!

St. Petersburg is a surprising large city. It probably is dwarfed by Tampa (which can't really even be seen the from here but I don't really know. But it looks nice from the water.


One of the things we really like about the city is how bike friendly it is. We're not just talking about a three foot afterthought along the streets - we're talking about a whole roadway just for the bikes! With a curb in between the bike lanes and the cars. We felt very safe riding around.

So anyway, we settled into our slip and hung around the boat on Thursday to plan our day for Friday.

First was a third visit to the Dali Museum - it's that good! Opens at 10 so we went early so as to attempt to 'beat the crowds'. It worked :-)

They have an excellent audio tour (I love those :-) ) so off we went.


First off was the fun staircase (the stairs end at the floor you can see - the rest is a continuation of the spiral).



The atrium on this floor is a wrap around glass structure that surrounds a good part of the building that faces the waterfront. It's an amazing thing! For lots of info on the museum, exhibits etc, please click here.

The newest exhibit is the 3d reality experience! It was crazy fun! Using one of Dali's paintings ( the Archeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus) and the equipment which included the 3d googles and headphones, you could actually step into the painting, look around and move from one part of the painting to another!

For some reason over the past years, I have developed an aversion to high places. As I moved higher and higher up one of the statues, the wind picked up and I truly felt that I was standing many feet above the ground!

View from the top of the sculpture on the left in pic above.

This is what I was viewing! Note the top of a pillar on the right side of the screen. The perception of being high on a ledge was counteracted only by my feet being on the floor and my hands clenching the sides of the chair!

It was really amazing.

Steve wanted to repeat the experience as the time limit is only 3 minutes and he had not found the pathway to the top of the sculptures.

Awesome fun!!

A lunch patio is on the outside of the museum as well as the dolphin painted with parts of several of Dali's most famous painting.

If you ever have a chance, it's a must see in this wonderful city!


It was off to our favorite Thai place for lunch (which was good as usual) and then back to the boat to regroup and refresh.

The weather has been perfect with high's in the low 80's and then cooling off to the 60's at night.

And again no bugs! It's nice to be able to again be able to sit on the flybridge and enjoy the evening.

Today it was off to the annual art festival in the very large park which lines the waterway just north of the marina.

Vendors from all over Florida and many from out of state (including one from Israel).









I walked down a couple of rows and then Steve covered all of the booths in the park.

Some amazing artists presenting their efforts.

This horse is made of wire.

Stone sculptures.

As he was riding along the bike path further north of the park, Steve encountered a full size rino - complete with bonnet and scarf :-)

There is no accounting for taste sometimes!! But very fun for sure ....

Wednesday April 18: Near Anna Maria Island

Leaving Laishley Marina

So on Monday, we ended up with plan B. Since there were whitecaps in the harbor and 3 - 4 ft waves in Charlotte Harbor, it just seemed like the thing to do. I mean if we're concerned about getting away from the dock it was really a no brainer :-)

Finally then yesterday (Tues) we headed out. The nicest thing? The marina didn't even charge us for the last two days since we couldn't leave due to weather!

Punta Gorda (which translates to "fat tip" referring to the shape of the peninsula formed by Charlotte Harbor) was a wonderful place. We'll be back!!

Steve had my Ember mug (keeps the coffee at 145 degrees until the last drop :-) ) ready to go and we were on our way (thanks Becky!!).

What a pleasant trip south then west on the harbor - sunny, cool breeze - current going our way (well at least for a while!).

My pet peeve (well, one of many) is a marina indicating they have wifi. Except only if you happen to be in the exact right spot or go to the boaters lounge. But don't expect it on the boat. It's just not right.

So I experimented with a new long-range usb adapter wireless receiver while at Punta Gorda. I really do love Amazon. Had it the next day and it worked GREAT!!! Internet on the boat. As long as the new antenna was taped to the boom and directed toward the marina office.

No problem :-)  I'm sure it will come in handy as we travel the waterways1

It was a short travel day - in and anchored by 3 pm. The afternoon was enjoyable in my favorite place: reclining chair with my feet up on the door edge :-)

Sunset was again very nice and by midnight the winds had calmed and the seas were flat.

Great sleeping weather in the mid-60's.

We were off early this morning after sharing our anchorage in Lemon Bay with two other trawlers. It would be a long 45 mile day through many slow areas and currents often against us as we were on the intracoastal but passing by many openings into the Gulf.

Venice is a very popular area for boaters and today was not an exception, even though it wasn't a weekend. I loved the murals painted on 3 building facing the canal which was dug to connect the waterways above and below the city.

There were 3 'bird' islands that were home to pelicans and various egrets. Fun to see.

Steve did really well capturing this picture of a roseate spoonbill. They are such a distinctive color. We rarely see these.

Not rare at all are the osprey whose nests line the waterways. These birds build huge to small nests but they all seem to love the waterway markers - particularly the green ones which have square sides!

We knew we were closing in on our destination when we came to the bridge across Sarasota Bay. Only another 5 miles or so!


Finally, securely fastened to the dock at the Seafood Shack!

Of course Steve was off of the boat pretty quickly to ride over to Anna Maria Island to the park. It was very nice but he reported that outside the park was just wall to wall people and cars.

 The beach though was as nice as always!

London, Becky's puppy, is growing up fast - so cute!

In May we'll take a quick trip to California to see her for ourselves :-)

Quick before she is no longer a puppy!!


Tomorrow off to Caladesi Island - great state park with a wonderful, natural beach.

Weather is coming in again - perhaps we'll stay a few days :-)