Sailing Tampa Bay Tales from the blog…. We (mostly) had an awesome sail today up Tampa Bay taking a N.W. heading out of St. Pete towards “Beercan Island” (Pine Key). With about 20 miles covered in 5 hrs in light and variable winds… We sailed around annoying crab trap hazards and the 40 or so boats participating in the St. Pete Yacht Club’s annual Classic Regatta and then proceeded to chow down on a tasty lunch while underway. As the day progressed with freshening winds, all was awesome, until we ran into a swarm of horrible biting flies… So there we were, patting ourselves on the back for doing a smooth 3-4kts on a very long port tack downwind broad reach back to St. Pete. until we crossed paths with the cursed flies. Dolphins breached nearby, pelicans gracefully floated along, and then they (the damned flies) appeared out of nowhere, hundreds of them. The only saving grace was we weren’t the only ones enduring the end of the world wrath, we saw our boat neighbor a hundred or so yards off our port side running around frantically topside swinging a towel around and then fired up the iron sail to try and get away from them. We followed suit and started motoring at almost max RPMs making 6.5 kts and trying to swat the flies off the boat. We managed to lose most of them over the next half hour motoring in, but a few malingerers stuck with us and refused to abandon the transom. I think I got bit at least 50 times. At this point we were tired and worn out when we uneventfully backed into the slip. Silently without discussion decided not to overnight on the boat again this day. With a purpose, we quickly packed up and loaded the truck, had our quick goodbyes with the liveaboards on our dock, and drove away. We called ahead and picked some delicious Thai food take out on the way home. Once home, quickly unloaded the truck, started laundry, and gorged on aforementioned food. Made our way to the back porch to relax. Damn flies!!! Any who, that steak marinating in the boat fridge made its way back to the house and will be just as delicious on the back porch grill mañana.
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Canon 60D
6 сен 2024
