Clearwater, Florida.... now this is what I expected. Not so much the wind but the fine white sand and a beautiful beach. On my first day here, Saturday, Linda needed the day off to recover from the stress of the crossing, so I wandered to this beach just at the end of our marina. 
It was fairly crowded with sun bathers galore. Of course there was no wind that day and unfortunately I did not bring the camera. The scenery was interesting enough that I decided then and there to spend a full week here.Through the week we also found a number of good restaurants and bars. Linda and I have now acquired a taste for oysters both baked and raw. When they are fresh they are really good and we found plenty of places that have fresh oysters and seafood. It was a good week despite the cooler weather. There were numerous Loopers in the harbor and we even got a chance to visit with friends from our home port, Jim and Sandi. Jim and I even got to play a round of golf together for the first time.
At this city marina there were numerous, read dozens, of charter and cruise boats. When the fishing charters returned, they cleaned their catch right at the dock and as you can see they usually had an audience.
Linda and I have had to learn about tides.....seems simple enough, the water level goes up and down once or twice a day depending on the location. 
Securing the boat to the dock takes some getting used to but also getting on and off the boat is different each time you go to get off. Here in Clearwater you can see that at near low tide we can easily get off the boat by stepping off the gunwale to the dock. High tide is no problem either because the boat rises almost three feet and we can easily step from the swim platform onto the dock. It is the times in between where we either have to jump down 2 feet or step up 2 feet that becomes the interesting part. Oh well. This update is getting long so I will tell you about our side trip to Tarpon Springs in a separate post.
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