Not until we got to St Petersburg downtown did we find a place we like enough to call home. This charming little city has much to offer, with at least four museums including the famed Salvador Dali, the University of South Florida six blocks away from the downtown with a beautiful waterfront lined with galleries, shops and restaurants. We puttered into the Vinoy Basin anchorage on Saturday, Mar 12. The waterfront was bustling with Crawfish Festival, the pier was busy with its usual share of tourists.

With friends and relatives living in the vicinity, we made arrangements to see them and re-provisioned. The following weekend, our generator died. Right in the middle of the Blues Festival and with friends on board. The fun stops when you cannot charge the batteries to run the refrigerator, A/C, stove, hot water heater, and more importantly TV! We can go to a marina to plug in every night, but that gets to be prohibitively expensive (think of paying hotel prices every day). We discussed our options and decided to kiss New Orleans goodbye. 

So from April to November, we were tied up at Tierra Verde Resort and Marina ($13/ft plus electric). This is a very protected marina, having survived a record breaking hurricane season. However, the heat was unbearable in the summer. We sought refuge at Eileen's aunt's home where we immersed ourselves with gardening, cooking and computers. When Eileen came to the U.S. thirty years ago, she stayed with her aunts in Philadelphia and worked part-time at their restaurant to finance her  college education. Since then, we have all moved and lived in different parts of the country. Now we find ourselves to be living in the same place again. They are now in their mid 60s and are retired. Once a week, we would get together and do something with them. This summer, we had several visitors - Eileen's sisters and cousin from Calgary and Philly, friends Marwan, Ling and Jackson and Kwai Lin from Boston. Whenever we had an opportunity, we took everyone to Fort DeSoto Park, our favorite beach. Beach analyst Stephen Leatherman, aka Dr Beach concurs, as he voted it to be America's number 1 beach this year.

In November, we slowly eased back into the boating life, getting the generator problem squared away. The only good news is that we got a boat show price for the Northern Light 6KW we selected. It runs great, and is pretty quiet compared the 16 year-old Westerbeke we had.