Living Aboard

We have sold our house and moved aboard. It was extremely fast as we were only listed for a week and had 4 offers. We agreed 11th March as closing and the pressure was on.

Our first task was to get a new home for Moosetracks. We made a short list of our preferred marinas and rang round to see availability. To our surprise and delight the first 3 marinas all had vacant slips to suit Moosetracks. We visited all three to check out facilities and the actual slips. We chose the St Petersburg Municipal Marina as it was a great location, great slip on the West Dock and nice facilities.  Some good friends Al and Francis had just left this slip and recommended it to.

So all went well the weekend before and we filled a POD with our furniture we want to keep for later and moved out of the house and onto the boat. Now that's a lot of stuff to fit into 45 feet!

The week of closing was hectic with the usual stuff but all went well and we are now closed.

Moosetracks in her new slip

We have been going to work from the boat for a week now and apart from forgetting towels going to and from the shower it seems to be settling in just fine.

Our neighbors all introduced themselves and seem to be a great bunch. It is very quite around here though between 6-7am when we leave for work. The first weekend seems to have picked up a bit more with lots more owners visiting their boats.

Sun Rise at our slip

It's a very nice view as you can see, with open water out to the sea walls. We have not had much waves or surge and the weekend traffic seems pretty slow inside the harbor.


Parking here seems to be working out, but with the St Pete grand prix coming up I'm sure we'll have more challenging parking very soon.


There are also great walks around the marina and the surrounding downtown areas.






Fair Winds to all Devin & Liz.

We had an anchor away this weekend with the SSCA and lots of folks joined us. Roughly 11 boats, with some coming and going so it's always difficult to count. We had 18 people in our cockpit on Saturday night, definitely a record for Moosetracks. We had dinner on our boat and it was a real blast, SSCA folks are so diverse and have so much to talk about with lot of combined experience to listen too.

Sunday we had breakfast ashore at one of the shelters on the north side and again turn out was great and we had hours of talking and sharing stories. We walked off the carb's for a hour or so afterward and boy that was needed. Sunday night we all had happy hour on Wakea hosted by Ralph & Barbara, again turn out was great and the conversation lasted past sunset. We all retired early after lots of libations and still dry mouths from talking all night.


Monday some of us stayed on to enjoy a farewell breakfast and celebrate presidents day. Steven and Joy even came over by car to share their news, they are leaving for Puerto Rico on Friday! They intend to leave Ocean Angel in the Caribbean on the hard for a few summers but cruise in the winters. The weekend ended fantastically with 15-20 knot winds out of the South for a downwind run home for everyone, great to get some real nice sunny & windy days.

We have a slip in St Petersburg Municipal Marina from March 1st. We got a slip just vacated by our friends Al and Francis as they left for the Atlantic Rally last month. Everything seems to be falling into place, fingers crossed for us.

Fair Winds

Christmas & New Year '11

Well I am just adding this as a place holder to update the January Blog when I get a chance. We had a great Christmas aboard Moosetracks down in St Petersburg in the North Basin. We had some great walks around downtown and enjoyed meeting some nice folks. We had to leave on the Sunday after Christmas to get back to work, and boy did it throw us out! We had winds 25-35 knots and dragged anchor at 5:30am, thankfully I had set an anchor alarm so we knew it was happening. We got home motoring all the way, just too difficult in narrow channels and gusting so frequently. Tom and Tug ran out to help with lines as we tied up to the dock in 30+ knots.

New Year we went to the last party with Hendy and Ingrid and all our friends from our old neighborhood. Hendy and Ingrid are moving to their new home in Barbados in the next year so it was their last party in Stag Thicket lane. It has been a great run for them of 30 years of New Years parties and we had been to the last 12.

Well we are truly back at work and wishing we were sailing instead.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas.

Thanksgiving '10

We have had a very busy few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. It started with meeting lots of friends at the SSCA West coast GAM in Punta Gorda. A very informative session of several talks and presentations followed by a lovely evening meal. We thoroughly enjoyed the day. It was a real treat to also see so many friends returning this year. Then a few weeks later we were at the SSCA Annual GAM in Melbourne. Again lots of folks from St Petersburg drove across and we all had a great time. Liz and I especially enjoyed dinner with Chris & Anne of s/v Mr Mac and Steve & Lynn of s/v Celebration. We all had dinner together on Friday night whilst Liz and I enjoyed hearing all their stories of their first year cruising. Boy what a steep learning curve it sounded like but they are all looking fantastically relaxed and extremely happy.

May Vacation

Hello Everyone,

A much needed vacation was in order after such a difficult year so far. Liz and I had hoped to go to the Dry Tortugas again this year with a similar itinerary to last year. Unfortunately as most of the world heard the BP oil spill in the Gulf was threatening the Florida coastline and we didn't want that in Moosetracks engine intake or plastered all over the hull not to mention the smell of the stuff if it got all around us. Now the possibility was not great but why take risks, prudent mariners avoid such things.

Getting Started

Well this is our first post since Microsoft killed our old MySpace account.
We will try to upload old albums in this site once Captain Devin gets used to it.

In the meantime if you love sailing you'll love this youtube video : KiteCam