Saint Petersburg, FL

Tuesday April 4, 2017
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It was a dark and windy night. As usual Tide Hiker was as solid as a rock and we slept well. The wind direction was amazingly steady, as illustrated in the following image from the anchor alarm

Tide Hiker did not move much

We took it easy in the AM because the run to St. Pete was only a few hours, and it was still blowing. We called an hour or so out of St Pete and received our ball number. By 1 PM we were secure. The mooring field is located in a protected pool right down town St Pete.

Tide Hiker's previous owners (Norm and Vikki Naughton) live in a high rise condo overlooking the mooring field and had been keeping an eye open for our arrival. They made contact and invited us to the Yacht Club for Happy Hour, so we launched the dink and met them for a couple of hours. Very pleasant.

Wednesday

St Pete is like Sarasota in that its "just perfect". We went ashore in the dink and caught "Lolly the Trolly" for a ride around town, and ended up at the Salvadore Dali Museum for the afternoon.

 Thursday

After an easy morning we went ashore for a coffee and then Ubered over to pick up the car on Longboat Key.

Back in St Pete the "Longest Table" dinner was underway downtown. It was an impressive sight. Maybe the "table" was 500 yards long? Unfortunately the evening was a bit cool and windy.

If you could see a bit more to the right you would see Tide Hiker 

A long shot from Tide Hiker at dusk.

Friday April 7, 2017

We woke to the sound of many yapping dogs, to discover that there was a "dog show" setting up on the shore line east of us. We had seen people erecting tents and facilities the day before. It was going to be a big weekend in St. Pete - on the shoreline north of us they were setting up for a Blues Festival.

We headed ashore by about lunchtime and visited the dog show. It was more of a "dog rodeo" than a "dog show" and dogs were competing in all sorts of fun events - a long jump over a pool of water and choreographed Frisbee catching etc.  It was really good fun and the dogs were having a blast. Friday was really a practice and elimination day - the medal winning competition was happening Friday.

The Blues Festival got underway by about lunch time. We did not need to get any closer than Tide Hiker. The music lasted until about midnight.

We ate dinner on Tide Hiker. Deidre had a crock pot going most of the day. It was great to get back to Tide Hiker after trips ashore and enjoy the aroma as we opened the door.