Location: 28.09.30N/82.45.26W Tarpon Landing Marina, Tarpon Springs, FL. Pirates in FL? Here's the evidence. We encountered this pirate ship as we were leaving Clearwater for Tarpon Springs. TS is on the Anclote River and it is still a working commercial waterfront. It was a short run today and another beautiful day in the Gulf. We saw a large turtle on the surface today and a few dolphin. We stopped for fuel at F&Y Products in TS before looking for the City Marina where we had a reservation. F&Y was $2.05/gal and was setup for fueling the commercial fleet. We arrived around 2 PM and should have realized that since it is Friday and a city owned Marina we

were in trouble. It turns out that the Marina office was closed and there was no one around. Another boat had the same disappointment so we both landed across the river at the Tarpon Landing Marina. The City Marina had around 6 slips and they appeared unsafe and were in absolutely terrible shape. Tarpon Landing was a good Marina with floating docks and was the same price at $1.50 per ft. It turned out that Tarpon Landing has a great outdoor bar and restaurant called Captain Jack's with live entertainment. We walked into town, walked the waterfront and stopped at Mykonos for dinner.

We have received a number of e-mails regarding our posts. Several have asked why we start each post with the Lat/Lon numbers. Many of our friends are following our trip using Google Earth (free download at http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html ) to track our movements and like to be able to zoom in and see satellite images our locations. The Lat/Lon information allows you to go to the exact spot. Also, you will notice that some friends have made comments along the way. In order to make comments you need to register or sign in. In the beginning we received some SPAM comments that we had to remove and we have since started to review and approve comments before posting. Eliminating the explicit SPAM from wherever keeps the blog suitable for the everyone.

Location: 27.58.35N/82.49.30W Clearwater Municipal Marina. It was a beautiful day with calm seas for our run from Longboat Key to Clearwater. Along the way we saw dolphin at various locations along the way. They swam and played in our wake. Mary saw some good size fish and I saw several flying fish. We ran outside about 15 miles offshore to avoid a large area of shoals just outside Tampa Bay. Clearwater beaches were jammed with sunbathers as we ran into the inlet to the marina. On arrival we filled our fuel tanks at the bargain price of $1.72 per gallon with our Boat US card. Our friend Pasquale Vitali was waiting for us when we arrived. We haven't seen him for a year so we had a nice evening catching up. We had dinner right at the marina at Crabby Bills, went for a walk along Clearwater beach and returned to the boat for the evening.

Tomorrow we have a slip reservation at the Tarpon Springs City Marina. We remember some movies when we were kids where hard hat divers gathered sponges on the sea floor. These movies were the beginning of our interest in the sea and together with Sea Hunt starring Lloyd Bridges on TV sparked our interest in scuba diving. We will have to sample some Greek food while we are there and maybe buy a sponge or two from one of the many sidewalk stands along the waterfront.

Location: 27.26.221N/82.40.798W Longboat Key
We had originally planned to stop in Sarasota but decided to run further to make up some lost time. The photo is taken in the anchorage. For our Florida boating friends this would be a great spot to spend a weekend or more. There are two waterfront restaurants right at the anchorage.

We ran outside today going out at the Venice Inlet ( 27.06.770N/82.28.067W ) and the ride in the Gulf was comfortable. The entrance to Longboat Pass has shoaled in and the channel entrance is now 200 yds south of the charted outer channel marker. Look for the floating green #1 marker and run a line to the original channel green #3. On the chart it should be about 9 feet in the channel. The Longboat Bridge will open on request and then follow the channel to the Northeast and turn south at the GIWW maker LP. Turn South and then turn west behind Jewfish Key.

We wish we could stay another day or two to sample the restaurants but we have to move on tomorrow to Clearwater City Marina where we will meet our old friend Pasquale Vitali from Gloucester, MA

Location: 26.55.007N/82.21.090W
The generator has been repaired. The injector pump failed. The generator is difficult to prime. We went through all the basic troubleshooting checklist including checking all connections, we replace a fuel line and we replace the primary and secondary filters and she still wouldn't run. We later concluded that the injector pump was not doing its job so we decided to replace the mechanical pump completely with a new Westerbeke electric pump. It works great and we are now sitting in one of our favorite anchorages just north of the marina. The electric pump also makes it easy to prime the line and filters in the future. We are going to enjoy the rest of this day and evening and tomorrow we will run to an anchorage just east of Longboat key at coordinates 27.26.221N/82.40.798 That will give us a quick exit on Thursday, out Longboat key pass to open water and north to Clearwater, FL.

Location: 26.52.14N/82.18.38W The photo is compliments of Nancy Brewster. We are finally underway and the boat ran great. Boca Grand bridge opens only on the hour and half hour so we had to pick up our pace and once again Persistence got up on plane. We are fully loaded
for the trip and the boat got up on plane with no difficulty. We made the bridge on time and settled back to our 10 mph pace. We pulled into Palm Island Marina to top off our fuel tanks and we noticed the generator was not running. Tom did some trouble shooting assuming that somehow fuel was the problem. It's doesn't look like fuel and fortunately Marine Max is on site at Palm Island so their mechanic will be here in the morning.
Sometimes divine intervention steps in and Tom was going into withdrawal for not being on the computer all day. He discovered that he left the wireless modem at home. We called Nancy and Gary Brewster and they came to Tom's rescue. Gary stopped by to pick up the wireless modem and Gary and Nancy joined us for dinner at Leverocks. Had the generator started again we would have been long gone and Tom would be looking for a tin can and string to try to connect with the Internet. We had a nice evening with good friends and Tom is online once again.

Departure this Sunday is still the plan. We will leave the dock in the early afternoon based upon the tide chart. The generator has been repaired. As suspected it was the raw water impeller. Thankfully, we keep a good supply of spare parts on board and we happened to have two impellers in stock so there is one left for a future replacement.

We have been busy yesterday and today loading the boat with groceries, water and all the items we will need for the trip. We have another day of loading and final checks and then we will be off the dock heading north.