Thursday we got an earlier start in case anything went wrong & we had to turn back. 0629 cast off under a beautiful full moon. Gorgeous sunrise as we entered Tampa Bay about 30 minutes later.
We were making great time, averaging 7.8 knots all through Tampa Bay. As best as I can tell, the cruising speed is somewhere around 7 knots, so we had about .8kts current pushing us.
We left Tampa Bay through Egmont Channel & made the right hand turn north towards Clearwater. Randy started raising sails & before I knew it we had all 4 sails flying; the first time that’s happened since I’ve owned the boat.
You Auburn people will appreciate that as soon as our last sail was raised & filled with wind, The Black Eyed Peas I Gotta Feeling came over the radio.
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We got to the Clearwater Municipal Marina fuel dock at 1205 & topped off the port tank. Tied up in our transient slip by 1250.
My friend Tom from work was in town with his fam, so I got to meet them and spend a little time hanging out with them on the boat, which was really cool.
Mark treated Randy & I to an extremely nice dinner Friday night. They even had a bottle of Kunde on the wine list, so I got to share that with the crew.
We’ll spend Saturday doing some chores and provisioning before hopefully getting out of Clearwater on Sunday morning, weather pending.