At Clearwater Beach, FL

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January 19-21, 2023: I spend two nights at a Florida beach destination.

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(continued from Tarpon Springs to Clearwater Beach, FL)

Once I’d settled into my slip — doing my best to arrange the lines to hold me into the slightly oversized fixed slip — I put my pups on leashes and headed out to find some lunch. Although it had been a short trip, my only meal was an early breakfast. It was long after 2 PM and I was very hungry after my relatively short trip.

Lunch and a Walk Along the Sea Wall

The marina was situated at the east side of the island, not far from where a bridge crossed from the mainland. Once I left the dock, I could walk along a concrete sea wall where a wide variety of fishing boats and tour boats were parked on my left with a parking lot on my right. Someone in the office had mentioned a seafood place at the other end of the parking lot so that’s where I headed with my pups, letting them take care of business along the way.

We wound up at a place called Crabby’s Dockside, with an open air bar, outside seating, and additional seating upstairs. We took a table outside, out of the wind. I ordered a dozen raw oysters — which I can’t seem to get enough of — a fried grouper nuggets appetizer, and a glass of sangria. The oysters were perfect: nicely shucked and icy cold. The grouper was a lot better than I expected and very good. The sangria was too sweet. (Oddly, I’ve tried sangria at at least four places since starting this trip and every single one has been sickly sweet. I’ve learned my lesson.) For dessert, I ordered some key lime pie, which was very good.

Afterwards, we took a walk along the sea wall, past Crabby’s where a wide variety of tour boats were parked. This was a serious tourist destination — it didn’t take a genius to figure that out. In addition to “normal” tour boats, there were boats with themes like a pirate ship or a giant shark. The boats went out several times a day — I’d see them pass the marina where I was parked — and how full they were seemed to vary with the weather, day of the week, and type of boat.

 

Three of the tour boats at the west end of the sea wall. The shark boat was particularly funny; the captain drove from inside the shark’s mouth, looking out between its jaws.

I headed back to the boat. Back on the docks, I met a few of my neighbors, who were also Looping. There was David and Karen on It’s About Time, Sue and Jeff on Pamet, and Dan and Robin on Horizon Bound, which was parked beside Do It Now. I think it was Robin who invited me to docktails later that afternoon at the other end of the dock.

I busied myself around the boat until cocktail time. I had nothing to bring other than my own drink, and it wasn’t even alcoholic — I haven’t been drinking much at all these days, even when I’m with others. There was a big crowd with folks from maybe eight boats. It was probably the biggest social gathering I’d attended since starting the Loop in October — other than the captains’ meeting in Child of the Sun back in Steinhatchee. It was a lively group and only a few people seemed surprised that I was Looping solo. It was two people’s birthdays — not both that day but within a few days of each other — and someone brought a cake they’d made on their boat.

Afterwards, I went back to my boat, adjusted my lines, and settled in for an evening with my pups. We made one last walk before calling it a night.

Sunset from our docktails gathering at the marina. My boat is down that dock, hidden behind the larger boats all around it.

Marina Stuff

I woke up very early to find the boat listing at about 10°, port side low. When I headed toward the stern to go outside and find out what was going on, the boat didn’t rock.

It became pretty clear when I looked out to where the boat’s starboard side was tied to the fixed dock: the midship line was taut and the side of the boat was right up against the dock pier. The tide had gone out, the boat had descended, and the too-tight line was holding up the starboard side of the boat.

This was completely undesirable. Most of the boat’s weight was being supported by a 5/8 inch thick dock line attached to a single cleat on my boat. That couldn’t be good for either the line or the cleat.

But there was nothing I could do to resolve the problem then — the line was too tight. I’d have to loosen it when the boat lifted the boat back up so it would float level. I went back inside, made my coffee, and started work on a blog post before my pups woke up.

As the sky brightened with dawn, I saw that it was a foggy morning, with a thick, wet fog that blanketed everything. My pups woke up and wanted to go out. Although the boat had come up enough that it was no longer listing, I still had a huge step up to get off the boat and onto the dock. I lifted the girls up there, one at a time, and then hoisted myself up. This is where it really paid to have a taller boat.

I took this photo the next morning at low tide to show the climb from my gunwales to the dock. I could actually see other boats under the dock better than over it.

I signed up for a second night at the marina, since it didn’t look as if the fog would clear out anytime soon. Then I had some breakfast in the boat and did some chores. When it finally did clear up and start drying out, I did some chores outside, including hosing the salt water from the day before — and from the fog — off the boat as well as I could. Because the hose was out, I topped off my water tank before stowing all the hose stuff away.

An anhinga spreads its wings to dry them on the back of my neighbor’s boat.

A Bike Ride with My Pups

Later, when the tide had come up enough to more easily access the dock again, I pulled my bike out, unfolded it, and put it up on the dock. Then I assembled the trailer I had for it with the idea of taking my pups for a ride around town. Soon we were heading back down the sea wall toward the tour boats, attracting the pointed fingers and cellphone camera lenses of tourists who thought my pups, standing up in the cart, were the cutest things they’d ever seen. (They might be.)

Our ride took us back past the tour boats and onto the sidewalk that runs between the road and the beach. Every beach entrance was marked with a No Dogs sign, so it was pretty clear my girls weren’t going to get a chance to run in the sand. But they were happy enough just riding down the wide sidewalk. Eventually, I found an ice cream place and pulled over for a treat. I came up with some rocky road for me and two much smaller cups of mostly whipped cream for my girls.

We rode to the end of the walkway, turned around, and rode back. There were some people on the walkway, but not many. There were more on the beach, which featured the whitest sand I’d ever seen. Along the way, I passed the Clearwater Beach Pier and its No Dogs sign. We kept going. We rode past the shops in town, looking for someplace interesting to stop, but all I saw were tourist junk shops selling the usual t-shirts and cheesy souvenirs. After about an hour of riding, I headed back toward the boat.

While I don’t have many positive things to say about Clearwater Beach — I’m really not into touristy beach towns — I do admit that it had a beautiful beach.

My timing was just right. The half-day fishing charters were just coming back and the guides were laying out the catches along the sea wall for the tourists to gawk at. They’d put all the fish on display to get other potential customers interested in a trip the next day. (I was definitely interested in a fishing trip, but I wasn’t interested in paying to go out on someone else’s boat when I had already paid good money for mine.) Then, once they’d shown them off for a while, they’d fillet every single one of them for the folks who had caught them. While they filleted, pelicans would gather, waiting for scraps. Sometimes, the birds got a bit pushy and jumped up on the boats or sidewalk near where the filleting was going on; the fishing guys would squirt them with hoses to get them to back off. Pelicans are big birds and you really don’t want to get physical with them.

Before going back to the boat I made one more stop. There was a combination restaurant and bait shop at the east end of the parking lot, I went in and bought some slightly smaller Gulp baits and a handful of lures and other fishing stuff. The fishing guides had told me that I could pretty much eat whatever I caught in those waters and I wanted to catch something. I needed to be prepared.

Logbook Work

Back at the boat, I had some lunch and spent some time working on my log book.

In addition to this blog, I keep two logbooks on the boat. (Fortunately, I’m a lot better at keeping them up to date than this blog.)

• 
  This log book is a good option for any boat owner.

  Paper Logbook. When I first bought the boat, I bought a Ship’s Log book from the folks at the Boat Galley. This spiral bound book has all the pages you need to keep detailed records of boat maintenance and voyages*. I filled in a page every day I cruised. In fact, if you recall me referring to “my log” in these blog posts, this is the log I’m talking about.

• Excel Logbook. I’ve also built a Microsoft Excel workbook to track each day I spend on the boat. It includes marinas, anchorages and all boat-related operating costs: overnight dockage, fuel, maintenance. A summary worksheet gives me quick totals or trip “phase” subtotals. A new monthly summary worksheet, which I just finished this morning, summarizes everything by month. I’m constantly fine-tuning this document, which I keep in the cloud so all of my devices can refer to and update it.

*I put an asterisk next to my statement about the Ship’s Log having all the pages you need because it does — but only until you run out. The book was obviously created for folks who aren’t on a year+ long voyage covering 6000+ miles. I’d been making entries in the book since I made my first voyage in Do It Now back in September and I only had 8 pages left.

So I spent an hour or so at my laptop designing my own logbook pages, using the ones in the Ship’s Log as an example. There were plenty of changes I could make. For example, my boat had only one engine instead of two, so I could eliminate fields for a second engine. I didn’t keep any kind of official watch schedule — even when I had crew members — so I could eliminate those fields. I didn’t need fields for generator use or even the latitude and longitude of places I stopped, so all that came out. And I added fields so I could log both the start and end point on each page (other than just the starting point, which was confusing me).

The idea was to find a print shop that would run off about 50 copies, double-sided on good paper, so I’d have another 100 days worth of logbook pages. Although I would have loved to have them spiral bound, I wasn’t interested in the added cost. So I’d three hole punch them and put them in a looseleaf binder.

I finished the design, turned it into a PDF, reviewed the PDF, and put it in the cloud, where I could access it with my phone. I then used Google Maps to find a place that could print it. Within a few minutes, I was on my bicycle, headed across the bridge to a FedEx Office store on the mainland.

It was about a mile and a half away. I pedaled for most of the way. (This was back before my bike’s gearshift crapped out.) When I got tired or needed to climb the big hill for the bridge, I added throttle.

At the FedEx store, there was some confusion about getting the file to them. For some reason, Verizon didn’t work very well at that location, so I needed to log into their WiFi to send it to an email address. While they printed it, I shopped for a binder and found one with a pocket up front. I figured I’d use it to insert a photo of the boat and I found a picture for them to print in color for me. They had a massive, industrial grade hole punch, so rather than using the one I had on the boat, I used theirs. I think the whole thing, including the fancy binder, cost about $25. They put it in a bag with handles, I slung it over my handlebars, and I headed back to the marina with a real feeling of accomplishment.

Prepping to Move On

By the end of that day, I felt as if I were pretty much done with Clearwater Beach. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a nice spot. But it’s not the kind of nice spot I like. There were too many tourists and a little too much noise. Tour boats — including some huge ones doing sunset dinner cruises — went in and out past my boat all day long. I couldn’t take my dogs to the beach and had no desire walking it alone among beachgoers. The shops weren’t selling anything I wanted or needed. And although I was sorely tempted to sign up for a fishing trip, I decided to save my money for a more unique experience.

I got my bike back down onto the boat, folded it up, and stowed it. I did the same for bike trailer. Then I took the girls for another walk along the sea wall before making some dinner back on the boat.

In the morning, we’d move on.