On Tuesday, November 25, we finished the Crossing and arrived in Clearwater about 2 pm, where we had planned to secure the boat and just sleep! But as we have discovered, planning never works on a boat! There were a few issues related to running the boat for 32 straight hours on rough water that needed immediate attention (I won’t bore you with details). These were issues that could. Not. Wait. So, they took a couple hours to solve. Once they were resolved reasonably well, we walked about ⅓ mile to an early dinner. Walked back and were tucked into bed for the night by 7:30p. Wednesday, we slept in (that’s about 7:30a for us!) and did very little all day long!
We did have the serendipitous connection with friends Tim and Deborah from Lawrence. They happened to be vacationing in Clearwater! They came over to our marina and we went for a dolphin cruise with them and their two boys before sunset.
That night, we were able to toast our success of making the crossing without too much drama! We feel it is quite the accomplishment!
On Thanksgiving Day, we explored a little, did laundry, made Mexican food and continued to relax! We were also able to enjoy “docktales” with our neighbor boat State of Grace, with a really nice couple from New York and their daughter.
We did have pirate visitors on Thanksgiving!
Black Friday, we left Clearwater for Gulfport. It was only about 3 hours away, but it was less expensive and as we are planning to be traveling for a week, we decided it was the better option as a marina stop.
At Gulfport we met pirates again!
Once we were secured in the Gulfport Marina, we took our bikes out to explore the downtown. It finally felt like we were looping, rather than just being focused on “moving the boat”.
Red Pearl 
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