(Sailboat approaching St. Pete Yacht Club)
If you’re interested in boating, this is a fun place to be. We are docked along a wall, looking at a turning basin that must be several hundred yards long and two hundred yards wide. The fuel dock is at the east end and the approach to the yacht club is at the west end, with the downtown skyline behind it. From our vantage point, we can watch boats approaching the fuel dock, some not so gracefully, other boats heading for the yacht club, and sailboats leaving or returning from the bay with 20+ mph winds.
The club here has a very active racing schedule. It has its own committee boat that went out Friday evening, Saturday morning, and this morning to set the marks. It seems that there is a fleet of J24 sailboats that, as soon as they enter our basin, raise their mainsails and head out under sail. They then eventually return under sail as well. Maybe they are taking some parade laps, with beer in hand, as they sail back and forth in the basin before dropping the mainsail and returning to their respective slips. I will admit that all of those racing mainsails look quite a bit better than our mainsail.
This weekend is the 41st Mainsail Art Festival. With over f250 exhibitors, and 100,000 visitors, it is rated as one of the top 100 art festivals in the U.S. It is located on a point of land adjacent to the Vinoy Resort, within a 15-minuts walk from us. Fortunately, we didn’t find anything we needed.
As I mentioned earlier, we came here, and even extended our stay, due to weather concerns. Although the rain and storms never materialized, the wind did. Yesterday, it was consistently at 20 mph, with higher gusts, and that is to continue through the afternoon. Those on the mooring balls have had a very difficult time getting into dinghies and more so getting back onto their boats. We have endured those conditions in St. Augustine and do not want to do so again.