Clearwater Beach to Madeira Beach to Gulf Port

Time to move again.... But only three days (short days) then we will stay awhile.   

We left Clearwater Beach yesterday after the last of our Amazon shipments arrived. (Well, technically one didn't - so we cancelled it.)

We have reservations further south so we need to get there - and before the big tropical storm that is about to whack us.  
Not many pictures for the last couple of days.  It's been very windy, wavy and not terribly comfortable.  Not much sleep overnight in Madeira Beach.  

We anchored out and there were 25knot winds that spun us on our anchor over and over.   Nothing like falling asleep on your side and having the anchor catch at 10mph and shove you and everything in the boat sideways.   Still - our new house batteries made it through the night and our fridge stayed cold even with the inverter running a TV all night in someone's bedroom.... 
Today we awoke, pulled anchor and cruised through Treasure Island to Gulfport.   
It's got a cute little downtown and many not so great neighborhoods.   We took a long bike ride and went way out toward the skyway bridge (but not on it).  It was really windy but the trail crossed in the middle of a bunch of mangroves.  Pretty cool.  There's no way a private enterprise would get permission to build a dock in there ... But Gulfport/St Pete?  No problem. 

Oh and a couple of days ago we visited a house with a half acre light display.  The 80+ year old guy has been doing it for 40 years. His wife died in October so his heart wasn't in it as much this year - but it's still over the top.  
yes... That's all in ONE yard .. and he apologized because it wasn't up to the level of what he's been doing lately.  Wow.  

Travel maps.  

Reminder.... If you ever want to know Where's Wynalda -- you can actually track our position LIVE..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Youngs Point ON to Fenelon Falls ON

Image
We left Youngs Point lock wall this morning about 8am with two hours of cruising to get to our first lock.   What a beautiful day.   We had two lakes to cross.  Clear Lake (which is clear)...   And Stoney Lake which is.... Granite.  The beaches are done and the navigation is critical.  It's a common thing to have solid granite just a few inches below the surface on both sides of the boat just 10-20 feet away.  As long as we are in the designated channel it's fine....   But prop repair and replacement is a big business here... Still... Driving past this kind of scenery all day would never get old... (Until it froze).  Eventually we journeyed through four locks today... And up to a fifth.    Lock 28, 30, 31, 32... And sitting just under lock 33.   Yes we are aware 29 is missing.  28 and 29 used to be a set of two (a flight lock) but in the 1960s they automated it (hydraulic controls rathe...
Read more

Fenelon Falls ON to Kirkfield Lock

Image
We are officially nowhere.   We had a pretty short trip today.   We left Fenelon Falls when the lock crew showed up at 10am and could put us through.... But ended up stuck there for a while because the lock (which is automated) was blowing circuit breakers and wouldn't open for the lock master.    As we exited the lock we saw the rocks on the left.  Neatly stacked by humans to draw attention to the massive shelf of rock just below the surface and just off the channel. Without those little stacks it would be easily possible to run into that sheer rock cliff under the surface.  After a while she figured out how to get it to open and we were able to break free and head to our second lock of the day.   This one was tiny and an easy pass.    They informed us, however, that our next lock was the Kirkfield Lift lock and it's on a maintenance day meaning they were not taking any traffic until 1pm so we might as well go slow...
Read more

Ludington MI to Grand Haven MI - and Gold Looper Status!

Image
We are back at North Shore Marina!   The place we started and the place our boat calls home.  We have a new slip (next to where we were last year) and we have a port tie which is best for our boat.   How we tie up here will take some getting used to... We left Ludington today and it was a bit breezy (15-20 knot winds).  It was our best day to get home in the next five though so we went.   You can't see it but the waves were coming up high enough to splash us all the way on the top deck.   Lumpy for the first 30 miles.  Until we reached silver lake sand dunes.  Then we could turn about 30 degrees and quarter the waves a little.  The white caps died down also.  It was kind of foggy today so we couldn't see very far.  More of a haze as it didn't affect navigation but made pictures difficult.  That's the light house at Little Sab...
Read more