St Petersburg

Hi All,
Wednesday morning we pulled up the anchor in Boca Ciega Bay and made our way to St Petersburg and the municipal marina there. A lot of cities around Florida are enacting laws that prevent cruisers from just dropping an anchor anywhere. Seems people that spend a couple of million dollars for a house on the water don't care for having people dropping an anchor right out their back door and staying for a week, a month, or longer. Can't say I completely blame them. Anyway, the city of St Petersburg has created an area by their marina where one can cheaply catch a mooring ball. It's not free but it's a lot cheaper than paying $1.85 per foot per night. So we are, or at least were last night, on a mooring ball. I thought being on a mooring ball would mean I'd be able to not set Drag Queen for a night. Not so. We had a pretty good thunderstorm roll through about sundown and there were so many barnacles on the mooring line I was afraid they might saw through our line with as much rocking and rolling as we were doing.

This morning I got a phone call from the marina office saying they are making early preparations for the possibility of Erika making an appearance and wanted me to move to one of their docks, at the same rate we were paying for the mooring ball. So we've moved in next door to our friends on Another Life.

We are continuing to watch Erika closely. It seems Saturday morning may be a turning point in Erika's life. If she hasn't fallen apart by then there is a decent chance she'll strengthen into a hurricane and could possibly hit the East coast of Florida. We're close enough that we'd get a lot of rain and some wind if that were to happen. Today I reserved a rental car for Saturday in the event we need to get out of here but I don't expect that to be the case. But we're prepared to go if we need to go.

That's it for now. Enjoying life and St Petersburg while we keep an eye on the sky.

Take care.
Brian