If someone had to guess where we are tied up, never in a million years. We have been sitting in St.Pete, in the North Harbor, waiting on weather to head for Charlotte Harbor. Has been some pretty serious thunderstorms building every night for the past three days. Ideally we need to make the run south an overnighter, so we don't have to enter Boca Grande pass after dark. I have an aversion to running any strange inlets at night, unless absolutely necessary. So today, the thunderboomers came early. Around three this afternoon. Now before I continue with this, let me say that I spent most of the morning cleaning battery cables and terminals. Had seemed the engine was spinning over too slow, and needed to do some maint. Now the thunderstorm hits, hard. Anchor drags big time. I turn the switch on to start the engine, and dead, dead, dead. NADA ZIP ZILCH I mean nothing happened except dead quiet. We were dragging fast, toward the sea wall, and shallow water. Not sure what we would have hit first. But before the sea wall, and before the shallow water, was the Floating Chapel on the Bay. So now you know. We are currently tied up to the church. Or the church pilings anyway. As for the engine, it's fine. The Yanmars have two plugs that connect everything from the switch panel to the engine. In my terminal cleaning frenzy, I managed to knock one loose. Starting the engine to check my work, resulted in it vibrating the rest of the way apart. Nothing serious, a two minute fix. But we are snug at the church, so not gonna move till morning. They even came out and helped with the tying up fiasco, and made us welcome. Also told us the holding here was bad, which we had already figured out. But every larger boat in here drug. One big power boat ended up in the sea wall, andon a new Hunter 49, a charter, they stayed in the cockpit and ran the engine as they were dragging pretty good too. We watched a Dufor 40 coming straight at us for a while, but the wind layed down, and his anchor caught before he got this far. Still, were safe and sound, tied up good, and thankful for the Floating Church on the Bay.
