Waltzing Matilda near St. Petersburg

Sunday, April 4, 2010

“I’m in 6-inch seas, with about 30 seconds between waves. There’s not a cloud in the sky.” So said Nathan as he was sailing about 15 miles out of St. Petersburg, Florida.
He had laid up for two and a half days near Tarpon Springs to rest up after his long open sea crossing on the northeast portion of the Gulf of Mexico. While anchored, Waltzing Matilda was aground during low tides, but did not keel over. As a result, it steadied the boat and helped Nathan get rest. “I didn’t realize how exhausted I was.” He had spent most of the several days of open sea crossing awake at the tiller.
Nathan is planning on spending at least two weeks in St. Petersburg, maybe more. “St. Petersburg is a sailing community and they don’t believe in power boats in this community,” he said. He needs to work on his boat: a cylinder head is leaking cooling water and it may have ruined his new alternator by spraying salt water on it. But he’s got the funds to do it. “Earlier I had been down to 15 dollars but when that got posted online, I got $185 in donations.”
Since hurricane season is only eight weeks away, Nathan is considering staying in St. Petersburg for a few months until the season passes. He’s thinking of trying to get a job in a sail shop to learn sailmaking so he can modify sails he salvaged off a wrecked boat to fit Waltzing Matilda. “I have the material, but I don’t have the knowledge or the machines.”
He’s become a judge of beaches. “The first beach I stopped at was nice. It was a nature preserve. The next one was obnoxious: it was a beer drinking preserve.” He saw one beach covered with what he thought were rocks, then he realized that it was a crowd – a big crowd – the beach was covered with people. Today, Nathan described what was before him: “All I can see is condos and condos and condos. I can see 20 miles of condos. It’s kind of disgusting.” He said he met a couple of teachers who told him that the population in the part of Florida he was at was very dense. “That’s your fault,” Nathan said he told them. “You’re teachers. The population shouldn’t be dense.”
Also, “I learned now why everyone hates jet skis. I’m thinking of putting up a sign: ‘Jet skis within range will be fired upon.’ I had put out a pylon to mark my anchor and some kid in a jet ski comes and uses my anchor as a racing pylon and goes whipping around it. A girl on a jet ski comes by and sprays exhaust all over me. It’s hot and it smells like gasoline. Then they go and start doing donuts in front of big tour barge. The boat is honking its horn at them and the jet ski people just flip it off. They don’t realize that boat can’t stop.”
However, “the flora and fauna here is just amazing,” Nathan said, and he’s seen things he can’t identify. He found a dead jellyfish and saw a starfish and was delighted with the live sponges washing up on the beach. Yet, there was the foul smell of a mangrove swamp that even “made the dog gag.”
“I was on one beach and I heard a rustling in the grass,” he said. “Then I saw these little crabs that had one big claw. Fiddler crabs! Millions of them! They covered the entire beach and as they ran for cover there were all those little crab feet making noises. They were really pretty, too.”
Nathan said the local water temperature was 72.2 degrees; 200 miles offshore he said the water is 84 degrees. And he was able to look 15 feet down into clear water. Later, when he sails further south, he said the water is clear to 50 feet down.
“The weather down here for next week will be just awesome: 10-knot winds from all directions, and 2-foot seas. Typical of spring in this area. After all that rough Mississippi Sound weather, this is nice. There are biting fleas, flies, mosquitos and bugs but no mosquitos on islands with no fresh water.”