Tampa Bay

We left Indian Rocks Beach in the morning just after nine. One hour before low tide. Not many people stirring in this live aboard community. Someone making a garbage run. Someone else going to work but very low key. Even Henry the local tame heron was MIA.

BTW Henry is boat trained. He perches on two boats but when he feels the urge, he flies off to shore. Good bird! 🐟

A pretty uneventful trip along the intra-coastal waterway. We admired houses and boats. The houses tended to be square and built out to the property lines. The boats were predominantly center consoles with one to four engines. There were a few derelict or sunken boats.

After several hours of the close quarters cruising, we popped out into Tampa Bay. Wide open and very shallow except for the shipping channel, the bay is surrounded by densely populated areas.

Directly through the bridge and 20 miles further is the city of Tampa Bay. Through the bridge and on the port side is St Petersburg where we started this adventure. We took our bareboat charter captain training there five years ago. Our primary takeaways were: sailing a large boat is a lot of work, and cruising out of sight of land is an entirely different kettle of fish. Neither of which we care to sample.

In any case we crossed the bay. We met close to a 100 boats and were glad to have a marina for two nights so we can avoid the Sunday traffic. There is still a parade of boats passing up channel as sunset approaches.

We are ensconced in the cockpit sipping drinks and snacking on sesame-crusted feta drizzled with thyme honey from Crete. Life does not suck.