Sun + Beach = Fun – Mann Aboard

Clearwater Beach, Florida *

The Now or Never arrived at Clearwater Beach Marina, across from Pier 60 after our crossing of the Gulf of Mexico. It has all the great vibes of a busy beach island with sun and fun, down to the fishing and tour boats that line the marina face dock. We love the activity and the proximity to the heart of the beach. We planned to make the beach marina a quick stay before moving to Clearwater Harbor across the bay and connected to the mainland, but upon visiting Clearwater Harbor and discovering the entire park and parking lot is under renovation and now includes a big dirt mound, as well as the beep, beep, beep from construction, and not to mention the long, long walk to any grass or any civilization, we changed our plans and will be staying at the beach our entire Clearwater stay. The mainland harbor has beautiful, new floating docks, but with the other issues, just wasn’t the place for us.

The beach marina has had its challenges but worth it to us. The docks are old, stationary with ½ length fingers. We are learning to deal with the tides and the tidal swings of 2-3 feet, and more during the full moon. It’s been a struggle for David to lift Remy on and off the boat, but we all are managing. It limits us as Tasha and Remy must depend on David unless we catch it right at low tide. We try to make our times off the boat with Remy in accordance with the tides and when the height is as even as possible to the gunwales (right around low tide).

Our first night in Clearwater, with our friend Doug still with us, we went to Dunedin for dinner. We had read and heard that it was a nice waterfront village, and it was. It is a very quaint village with a very small-town snow globe feel. They’ve kept the downtown small, with a narrow street, lots of outdoor dining and shops. Everything was lit up; we are not sure if it is early Christmas or just a really nice way to make their downtown charming. The guys were so tired from the crossing, we ate, drove through, and returned to the boat. We plan to return to experience more of this town and learned they are having a Christmas lighted boat parade in early December. We have wanted to see one, but living in the north, it has never happened. This year is the year!

We have been able to witness some incredible beach sunsets beginning our first night here. Pier 60, which is right across the street, hosts a sunset celebration each night. Music, artisans, a board walk, and magnificent sunsets abound.

We are finding the beach transient slips are quite active. In just over a week, there has been quite a rotation of loopers and other travelers in and out. As we write this, there are about 25 boats in all and 10 of those loopers. We have enjoyed seeing those we met before upriver and meeting new boaters from all over the country. The boating community is welcoming and supportive of one another and we feel at home with our own little village.

We returned from time off the dock to see a Jefferson Boat on the dock across from us. Our friends from our home port, Keith and Ruth, used to own a Jefferson and we all (including Remy) had a lot of fun times on their boat. This one looked a lot like it. Come to find out as we met and talked with the owners Patti and Tracy, it was our friend’s former boat! This is the boat we tracked down this summer early on in our voyage on the Cumberland River east of Nashville. Patti and Tracy were not on the boat, nor did we know they had planned to do the loop, but we had heard it was at Cherokee Marina and while there we took photos. It has been renamed Buena Vida (formerly Boat Dog) and is in good hands with the Fords! We were able to spend a few days with them and hope to catch up again. Small world again!

We headed out on a day adventure to Tarpon Springs. We took the Jolley Trolley, a sweet little trolley with routes up and down Clearwater Beach, into Clearwater proper, and north to Dunedin and Tarpon Springs.

They have regular stops each hour, but you can jump on and off anywhere on the route. This is our new wheels as it traverses a lot of great areas to explore! Tarpon Springs is known as the sponge capital of the world. Greek immigrants settled in Tarpon Springs in the early 1900’s and built a thriving industry harvesting, processing, and selling natural sponges that are abundant in local waters. For the Greek immigrants in Tarpon Springs, life was similar to their home islands. The sponges are skeletons of living sea creatures and are harvested off the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico using surface boats and long poles to bring up the sponges as well as divers. With the large population of Greeks, Greek restaurants and bakeries abound.

The trolley ride was just over an hour with an expanded bus station stop. We arrived in Tarpon Springs and walked the docks along the main street in town. Several of the sponge boats had just come in for the day and were counting off the number of sponges in their harvest. The dock was full of fishing boats and sponges. We had a recommendation for a great seafood restaurant with seafood right off the boats, however, they were closed the day of our visit. So, we headed to one of the Greek restaurants and enjoyed a tasty lunch. They had their own bakery, a very large one and everything looked scrumptious, so we picked out some delectables to take to our Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s. We pretty much covered everything in Tarpon Spring in a short afternoon, lots of tourist shops and sponges galore. We are glad we went and experienced the harvest coming in from the gulf as well as frequenting the Greek restaurant and bakery, but we’ve now been there and done that.

Famous Sponge Docks

As part of the routine maintenance with our vessel, David needed flush the engines. We are new to saltwater life and had heard one needs to do this when running in salt water for a time. We have now been in salt water three weeks and traveled more than 500 miles. Tasha was in the galley and David had crawled into the engine room. It was another Oh, $&#@ moment as a big pop let out and David yelled. Tasha doesn’t know how to respond anymore to these engine room bursts of tainted language and has begun to wait until he decides to share the issues of the moment. This time, the engine water strainer cracked. And another I hope we don’t sink came from his lips! That’s two in a couple of weeks! It’s getting a bit frightening. This was supposed to be pleasure boating and there is nothing pleasurable about worrying about if your home and belongings might sink. David spent the next few hours researching the issue and searching for parts. Again, West Marine came through. West Marine is terribly expensive compared to other boat suppliers, ours at home are very small and have very little, and we typically don’t frequent them. But in our time of need, these past couple of weeks, the Florida, large stores have come through for us and we have found parts in stock nearby. David called the St. Pete store to ensure they indeed had the part and put it on hold. With our trip to Fort Myers fast approaching, we were picking up the rental car the next day and had time to run to St. Pete to retrieve the part, check out the downtown marina we will be frequenting for Christmas week, and grab dinner. Timing (having wheels already reserved is everything!

Have you all heard of TURO? We hadn’t until researching rental cars. Rental cars are still almost impossible to secure especially one way and very expensive compared to a year or two ago. We used the TURO app to secure a car for our trip to Fort Myers and reserved it for two days. TURO is an app that markets and manages privately owned vehicles rented to individuals. Much like rental agencies, there is a thorough screening, and they offer insurance, or you can use your personal insurance. We found a vehicle that was located near the trolley line for easy pick up. We had asked to have it delivered to us at the marina, but the cost of delivery and return ($80) was more than a day rental of the vehicle. We chose to utilize the trolley for $3.35 for both of us and about 30 minutes time ($6.70 with return)! It was a nice, clean vehicle that met our needs and a good experience. We were able to share our newfound resource with other loopers. It’s a great alternative to the expensive rental car market and we will use again.

Thanksgiving was our first traditional family holiday away from home. We were delighted that our former dock mates and longtime friends from our Ohio River days invited us to their Fort Myers home for Thanksgiving dinner. Mark and Jacquie followed their dream and left Indiana in 2013 to open a bar and restaurant on Fort Myers Beach, Hoosiers in Paradise. Over the years, we have been able to visit a handful of times. For the last six months (since we were getting ready to depart home) Mark has texted Tasha just about weekly and asked, “when are you going to get down here?” Finally, two weeks before Thanksgiving Tasha was able to tell Mark we had a chance of making it nearby Thanksgiving and we did. Getting to Clearwater and securing a slip for a month, allowed us to finally make plans to head to Fort Myers for Thanksgiving. Our TURO rented vehicle provided us our ride for the 145-mile trek south.

***Thanksgiving with sunshine at a canal hom*****e in Fort Myers**

Thanksgiving morning, we loaded up with Remy in tow and headed south to Fort Myers. We also wanted to check out the Fort Myers Yacht Basin, as we will be spending all of January there. And then we headed to Mark and Jacquie’s just down the street. They live one house off the Caloosahatchee River and are on a canal. Too bad it is not a deep-water canal so we could get the Now or Never back behind their house. We enjoyed a wonderful celebration of traditional Thanksgiving dinner as well as a Florida touch of fresh shrimp. We loved being with our friends from our home dock and the new friends we met. They hosted about 25 for dinner, family, staff, and patrons. It is what a wonderful showing of Friendsgiving and we had the BEST time. Remy loved the attention, the too much turkey that all fed her, the yard to run around in, and a bit of a squabble with one of the cats! It was a first for us to sit outside in shorts and flip flops around a pool on a beautiful warm Thanksgiving Day. We enjoyed a wonderful day and send a big thank you to our friends for including us. We really felt at home and in talking to other loopers, it was a day they felt quite lonely being at the marina without a celebration. If you are in Fort Myers and head to the beach, make sure you visit Hoosiers in Paradise on Estero Boulevard! They serve the Hoosier tenderloin and the best fish tacos! Tell them Remy sent you!

We returned to the boat that evening after declining an invitation to spend the night as David needed to get to work on the water strainer project. The boat cannot run without it, and we needed to pump out, as we had family coming to spend the weekend with us. Again, another project the captain had never taken on before and it is in a very tight space on the boat. There was no way to get under the engine with the new pieces, so he needed to remove a larger piece, take it to the dock, disassemble it, rebuild it with the new piece and then put it back in under the port engine. We also hoped we had all the tools needed to complete the job.

Amazingly, things went smoother than anticipated and what was planned as an all-day event was completed prior to lunch! And the tell all, the engines were cranked and there was no water spraying through the engine room. So thankful we have our own mechanic on board, not only saving us money but time as mechanics are so hard to secure in a timely fashion. Guess all the tools on board really pay off. No sinking today! Whew!

With our reservation woes and difficulty finding slips, we have secured a slip in Clearwater until right before Christmas when we move to beautiful downtown St. Pete for Christmas week. We visited when we were picking up our boat part on Thanksgiving eve and can’t wait to spend more time there. The downtown is bustling with the Christmas spirit and will be a festive stop for the holiday.

Cheers! D, T & R

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