St. Petersburg, FL

Days on cruise: 257

Distance traveled: 23.0 miles

Travel time: 2 hrs, 43 mins

Total trip odometer:  5,663 statute miles

We got a slow start this morning, Thursday, but didn’t have far to go, so still arrived at our destination before 2pm. Back in “slow speed; minimum wake” or “idle speed; no wake” territory, for which Florida is famous, we’re finding our travel speeds are slower than they’ve been in a long time. Those of you who do mental calculations of our distance and travel time date already know this.

Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, we took a walk on the spectacular white sand beach of Madeira, Beach, FL adjacent to John’s Pass. There were very few people, and if not for the wind, it would have been sunny and warm. Alas, not warm, but still beautiful.

Someone spent some time building a castle!

The view out the back of our boat from the marina.

View from the bridge next to our marina crossing to Madeira Beach from Treasure Island. Note: no people!

Today’s journey on the ICW again took us under many bridges, but none of them required us to call for an opening, and conditions remained calm and easy, if always shallow.

Coming into St. Petersburg, The Pier is visible from along way away. Its’ inverted structure is dated and schedule for demolition and redevelopment.

St. Petersburg has condos and high-rises like lots of other Florida shoreline, but it manages to be prettier than most, with architectural interest and none of the bland 1960s and 1970s block-style condos.

As usual, public art is fun.

This place almost looked church-like, but the street level was typical commercial development. Wonder as to the history?

An electric boat on the right, with an electric-powered paddle boat on the left. Wave of the future???

Lots of pink buildings, which manage not to look funny here in Florida like they would at home in the Pacific Northwest, and soothing palm trees.

We were pleased to see on arrival that they had us park behind “Proud Lady”, Bill and Joy, from our group of Gulf Crossing Buddy Boats! We enjoyed cocktail hour together, and it’s great to see them again.

With almost a full moon tonight, sunset is gorgeous.