Blues Festival in St Pete, Fl

St Pete waterfront

When we cruised into St Petersburg downtown one weekend in March 2005, we were thrilled to find a charming waterfront city hopping with activities. The waterfront is lined with marinas, galleries, shops and restaurants. If you are looking for arts and culture, you came to the right place. Several museums including the famed Salvador Dali, a couple of theatres and a university (University of South Florida) are all located in and around the downtown area.

We anchored at the Vinoy Basin anchorage. With friends and relatives living in the vicinity, we made arrangements to see them and re-provisioned. We enjoyed the area so much fun we stayed a whole week. Over the weekend, smack in the middle of the

Vinoy Basin, St Pete downtown

Blues Festival and with friends on board, our trusty generator died. Talk about great timing. The fun stops when you cannot charge the batteries to run the computer, TV, refrigerator, A/C, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. 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 reluctantly kissed New Orleans goodbye. Our cruising plan was to spend the winter in SW Florida, spring in the Florida Panhandle and New Orleans, Louisiana. For the summer, we would cruise back to Mobile Bay and head up the inland waterway to Mississippi or Tennessee. So much for planning.

Guess all good things must come to an end some time. We searched frantically for a marina. There weren't many to choose from, as most had been bought out by developers and they had them turned into dockaminiums. We were lucky to find a space at Tierra Verde Resort and Marina. It was a relief to hear it is in a hurricane hole; we have managed to dodge Hurricanes Dennis, Frances, Jeanne, Rita and Wilma last year. 

As it turned out, St Pete was an excellent place to spend the hurricane season. We had a car to get around as it was stored at a relative's place. The marina is a mere ten minutes from Fort DeSoto Park, which by the way, was voted to be America's number 1 beach in 2005.

As for the generator, we got a Northern Light 6KW installed after the hurricane season was over. It runs great, and is pretty quiet compared the 16 year-old Westerbeke we had.

St Pete is hosting the annual Tampa Bay's Blues Festival this weekend. If you are in this neck of the woods, come and discover St Pete for yourself!

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