Imagine what one week of cruising looks like, and you’ll never get two identical weeks. BUT— if we had to pick one, these 7 days are pretty typical of our cruising life. We spent some time at anchor, and one day at the dock. We enjoy some gorgeous sunshine, and run from a storm. We travel some days, others we stay put. We sail when the wind blows and motor when we it doesn’t. We get some work done, a workout in, and a little time at the beach. And we celebrate Kirk’s birthday — even though that doesn’t happen every week (which he’s certainly relieved about, though I would love more excuses to go out for ice cream!)
Hope you enjoy!
Lauren & Kirk
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Music: artlist.io
Adventures – A Himitsu https://youtu.be/8BXNwnxaVQE
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Episode Dialogue
Woo!
Quick! Oh, you can see the front coming!
Holy crap. Yay! Oh no. [Lauren] Woo! Beach day!
60 degree beach day! We decided to just walk around and look at houses. I love architecture, and we make a tiny bit of money investing in real estate.
Am I going to get to eat the end of the waffle cone?
[Kirk] Yeah
[Lauren] Last time on Sailing Soulianis, we completed our longest sail yet. An overnight, 190 mile passage, from St. Joseph’s Point across the Gulf of Mexico to Clearwater. We found a tiny little anchorage and began living life on the hook. That is, until we realized, while cleaning the dinghy the day before, we had lost the drain plug but were able to make a fast repair thanks to some incredibly kind fellow boaters. And now we’re gonna pick up right where we left off to bring you seven days of cruising life.
♪ Always have to steal my kisses from you. ♪
We are at anchor. This is the first time we’ve really anchored just to chill. We’ve anchored here and there while we’ve been traveling, but it was always just for an overnight stop, and then we were off again. Yesterday, we left the Clearwater Marina, which is literally right on the other side of this causeway, you can see a mast going past off in the distance. We traveled for two hours and went about ten miles yesterday because there’s a ten foot bridge here that we couldn’t get around. And I could probably throw a rock and hit the slip that our boat was in. But, we found this little itty bitty hole here where mangroves all around on that side, and then a restaurant right behind me with a free public city dock with a Publix grocery store about a block away. It was the easiest, fastest reprovisioning with a dinghy we could ever imagine. Pretty spectacular.
[Kirk] Where we headed?
We’re on a that little bar over there. All right.
[Kirk] Is Rahm still dry?
Rahm is dry. [Kirk] Right on.
[Kirk] If you want to. All right, here we go!
[Lauren] ‘kay!
[Kirk] See ya, Soulianis.
[Kirk] Straight line my ass. What is happening here? Because we were still getting used to leaving our boat at anchor, being able to see her from our bar seats was pretty cool. But life on the hook didn’t last very long, because we still weren’t able to use all of our solar panels.
[Michelle] Hi.
[Kirk] Hi! Thank you for the splitter.
[Michelle] No problem.
So we were anchored out for two nights, and uh with all the cloudy weather we’ve been having and Lauren trying to finish this next week’s video, uh, we really depleted our batteries, and that combined with a quickly-worsening storm, we are back at the dock.
She is super nice.
Yeah.
Michelle. Michelle from Clearwater City Marina.
Employee of the Month?
Hell yeah.
Why is she super sweet? What’d she do?
I dunno. She’s just like super accommodating. Like, anything you need, call me, I’ll be here til seven. And so-and-so will be here after that, and
Cool.
No worries.
We’re supposed to have winds up to 45-ish miles an hour, um, and, potentially tornadoes. Man those birds are loud behind me. Uh as well as uh large hail, so I’m gonna pull our brand new solar panels off our boat so they don’t get destroyed. Without bending them. ♪ Riders on the storm. ♪ ♪ Into this house we’re born ♪
♪ Riders on the storm. ♪ ♪ There’s a killer on the road ♪
Here comes this front, and the rain has just started. There is some lightning. We’re getting 20 knotts sustained, and we are behind this bridge, which is gonna block I think the majority of the wind for us. Oh, you can see the front coming. Here it comes! Lauren, you wanna come see this?
[Lauren] What’s happening?
[Kirk] Come up here and take a look. You can see it coming across the bay.
Woo!
[Kirk] Quick!
Holy crap.
[Kirk] Look at, look at how much rain there is right there.
We’re gonna get blasted in a second, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
[Kirk] ♪ Into this world we’re born. ♪
We have to wait for the next, what is it called?
Bridge? ♪ Hiders from the storm. ♪ What is this song?
[Kirk] I don’t know. It came up on YouTube after Riders on the Storm.
‘Kay, I’m videoing it. We’re about to take off from Clearwater Marina after spending a very windy evening at the dock.
Uh, we’re gonna go back and anchor in Mandalay Bay.
The storm didn’t end up being that bad.
[Lauren] Yep, it turned out to be pretty mild compared to the forecast. No 45 mile gusts, no hail, and no tornadoes. That was just fine with us. Our batteries were topped off, and we were ready to take off again.
[Kirk] But it was still quite windy at the dock. And with a stiff current running, we didn’t have much wailing room for navigating. So we decided to back the boat out of the slip and spin her around manually.
Yay! Oh no. Are we good? Beach day!
60 degree beach day!
We managed to pick the coldest day to go to the beach. Caused a racket.
[Lauren] Are you doing a monkey impression?
No, they’re kind of the same.
Before going to the beach, I wanted to get a workout in. Good public rec areas like this can be really hard to come by. So when I find one, I like to take advantage.
[Lauren] Our boat is out there, floating.
The boat, our boat, our boat is afloat.
Seemingly in the same spot.
[Kirk] Seemingly.
[Lauren] So, that’s cool.
That’s positive.
It’s always a plus, to see the boat’s still there.
[Kirk] There’s no pirates around.
Just cruising down the ICW under sail. Beautiful day, we’ve got the wind behind us. Listening to a boat playlist by Dan Stoagal.
Dan is a fellow Tartan 37 owner. One of 402 of us?
♪ Come and get your love, come and get your love, ♪ come and get your love now. Now. ♪ Come and get your love. ♪
[Kirk] ♪ Gonna sail under a bridge. ♪ Sail under a bridge, sail under a bridge, sail under a bridge right now. Oh no, there’s only 74 feet!
[Lauren] Stop.
[Kirk] Whatever will we do? Ah! Woo! Woo! Oh it’s actually two one-way bridges. That’s kind of strange.
[Lauren] This little spot right here is Madeiro Beach.
The anchorage, though right next to the channel, proved to be fairly peaceful, probably because it was right next to a drawbridge, which tends to slow speedy boaters down. We stayed just one night, and we were off again.
[Kirk] That was crazy.
You think I can uh sail through the anchorage while eating a piece of pizza? Probably not the best idea.
[Kirk] No.
I guess I’ll just have to look at it.
So we haven’t been able to get ashore a whole lot. The past two weeks we’ve finally been able to really cruise I guess. We’ve been staying at anchor and kind of getting to explore a couple of the little cities that we’ve been in, but today is my birthday.
Happy Birthday, love.
We’re anchored in Gulf Port, and we took a bus over to St. Pete to check out the neighborhoods and kind of see what St. Pete was all about.
[Lauren] Whatcha doing, hon?
Looking at old houses. We decided to just walk around and look at houses, because I love architecture. There’s an Open House today from two to four on this one.
[Lauren] Oh yeah? Wanna go see it?
We can try.
[Lauren] Whatever you want. It’s your birthday.
We make a tiny bit of money investing in real estate. We have a couple of rentals right now, and I hope, eventually, to kind of transition to doing it more full-time, and hopefully that can kind of support us in retirement. Uh, and I can stop working my day job.
[Lauren] Everything’s competing.
[Kirk] It’s all overgrown, but it looks cool. I think that’s what reminds me of Brisbane, Australia. Stuff never dies. It just keeps growing. So every chance we got, when we’re in a new city, we just like to walk around and look at the different neighborhoods and see all the different types of architecture and get to experience how people live in different neighborhoods around the country.
Ha ha, it’s a cappucito. It’s a Cuban coffee with a little bit of milk. It’s delicious. It’s like dessert.
[Lauren] What’d you get?
Butter Beer ice cream with a waffle cone. Because my love makes things right.
[Lauren] What happened?
I ordered a chocolate milkshake, and it tasted like marginally chocolately milk. There was no ice cream in it. And I was just gonna leave and be pissed off. And Lauren went back there, and told ’em they –ed it up. Got me something better.
Am I gonna get to eat the end of the waffle cone?
[Kirk] Yeah.
I don’t know if I’m gonna make it there. It’s so sweet.
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