Schipperke

March 25, 2018

Brave spirit of a dog, burning more
    brightly than any tiger yet.

Chasing the hoofed intruders of the world
    through high and low, thick and thin

Leaving no stone unmoistened, no passing
     boat unbarked

May your little light shine on, wherever 
                       you are,

-and may your spirit roam free on the 
    endless beaches of the hereafter.

                          -Raf Muilenburg

 The book---A Sea Dog's Tale
                    The True Story of a Small Dog on a Big Ocean
     
              * Peter Muilenburg

The average Schipperke stands 10 to 13 inches high at the shoulders and weighs between 12 and 18 pounds. Known as a Belgian canal barge dog, tenure boat dog, bred for centuries just to live and work on boats.
In World War II, the Belgian Resistance used the dogs to run messages between various resistance hideouts and cells, to which occupying Nazi Forces were none the wiser.
Check out a pictures of a Schipperke on the AKC website. The pictures that I took of the dog are not good enough to post.

I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I am.


On to the pictures, the goto part of my blog that my readers like best. I am going to do the pooch parade first since that seems to be where I have started by talking about Schipperke. 

This is Ivy a very special dog to me, she belongs to TJ.

 Buster lives on a 63 boat named Navigator, he weighs 100 pounds. Buster is a relaxed well trained dog that won my heart immediately.

DOG, is a 4 pound Chihuahua that lives on boat next to where we were located at the Fort Myers Yacht Basin. The 'g' in his name is pronounced like the 'g' in Gee Whiz.

OOPS, this isn't a dog it is a miniature pig with a shoe fetish.  

We were scheduled to leave Fort Myers on March 3rd but because of the weather in Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay we stayed until that improved, 10 days later we left Fort Myers headed north to Dunedin, Florida.

We suffered with the fun we had, while we waited out the weather.

What is a dock party without Instant Pots? Rob and Russ cooked pea soup and American chop suey others brought so much food we all left stuffed. The following picture will not mean anything to most of you, but the people in them are so much fun to do things with.  As I have said before the people at the FMYB make it feel like a village.

I am the boss and don't forget it

Russ

Elaine and Connie

 Kent with his sugar free apple pie. But what is an apple pie without ice cream and chocolate sauce? That is like having Diet Coke with your fries.

Barb and Ross are a good team making pies, Ross makes the crust and Barb does the fillings.

Yeah, Tricia gets a mini Kitchenaid

We finally left Fort Myers. 

First stop was an anchorage in Pelican Bay at Cayo Costa. We stayed here one night and traveled 6 hours to an anchorage just north of Sarasota, Cove Terrace, Sarasota Bay. Cove Terrace is a nice anchorage to keep out of the wind

We had a week planned at the municipal marina in St. Pete. We found out that our good friends Wally and Darcy were going to be there too.  The week was a delight with meals together, visiting museums, and walks to the grocery store.

Here is the evidence.

Wally and Darcy

The Dali Museum

This piece of art was by far my favorite 

The Dali Museum, no two pieces of glass are the same

Dali's mustache

We sure do have fun!

These are the wrist bands given to us when we went into the museum. I wonder how this was started.

We walked the art district on the way to the Dali

An interesting piece because if you saw the piece without looking through a camera you couldn't see the heart.

A bowl made of handmade paper 

Glass jewelry made from liquor bottles, I was so impressed with this idea.

Chihuly Collection

Glass work covers an entire room

A large piece of glass art that hangs from the ceiling in the museum.

Before leaving the museum we walked out back to view artist at work in a glass studio. Also the museum had a very interesting long informational video about Dale Chihuly and his work with other glass artists.  Dale does not work alone but with a team to create gorgeous works of art.

We were all able to attend an hour watching a master make a piece of glass artwork.

St. Pete is a city of murals.  I saw hundreds of them, but this was the most unusual.

Goodbye St. Pete onward to Gulfport.

Gulfport is a funky little town with brightly painted houses. One person told us that Gulfport was failing until "the gays and artists" moved into town.  I asked him if he ever heard that "if someone is too weird for Gulfport they are too weird". He had not heard that.  Gulfport is a favorite of boaters that are doing the loop and as well as other boaters.

Here are a couple of shots from this funky town.

They didn't take walk-ins so I was out of luck, "Big mistake, big mistake"

For the life of me...

Rob's new cup and the story that goes with it

On to Clearwater Beach.

There are about 7 anchorages just off the ICW that make it a short dinghy ride to shore, we were in Clearwater Beach North. The beach is beautiful but almost impossible to see, for the families that were there on spring break. Colorful umbrellas and children enjoying the water. It was very nice to see that some families do have the financial resources to take a nice vacation.

High School percussion raising money to go to state championship

a neat sound on the beach

House boat in the harbor...

a few days later

Female Anhinga

A man in his twenties or thirties made this touching sand sculpture.

Back in Fort Myers with our Docktail friends.

We all had Easter dinner at a local restaurant, The Farmers Market

We never did go to Dunedin. Next year.

Rob's note on crab pots, take note boaters!

First year out, heading south in the Chesapeake Bay, Rob saw a crab pot among   the white caps.  He idled both engines and put them in neutral, but it was too late, the line wrapped around the propeller shaft.  Paul, in the boat ahead said "do not go in the water to cut if off, give the engine a few short burst of reverse and maybe the line would unwind." It did

Last year while waiting for a bridge to open in Wrightsville Beach (a city, with no crab traps anywhere), we picked up another crab line and trap that did not have a float marking its whereabouts. The trap jammed between the propeller and the hull, resulting in a loud buzzer coming on and having to shut down the starboard engine. Rob did put on his wet suit and dive down to look at that, but decided it was over his pay grade, so we spent $100 plus a tip on a diver (actually two).

Crab pot are different than lobster pots. They are all small perfectly round styrofoam balls about 10” in diameter. They come in two colors. White, that blend with white caps. Or black that blend with water. Some states or counties require they be placed in a row, which makes it a bit easier. Most do not.

This winter when we left Saint Petersburg and entered Tampa Bay, we were greeted by white caps. Rob at the helm did not notice the first in a series of white crab pots, until I pointed it out. Engines to idle. Both in neutral. We looked behind us and noticed two or three large chunks of white styrofoam. Pretty clear that one of the props demolished the float, but we didn’t appear to wrap up line or haul a trap. Linda Jean didn’t stop like she did the first year in the Chesapeake. When we sped up, I noticed a small vibration. When Rob returned from the galley around 11 after making his mid morning coffee, he said he could feel the floor over the starboard engine room almost bounce. A bit of an exaggeration.

We called a diver to meet us at the marina in Gulfport. When we arrived, he was already there. He looked around under the boat. There was nothing wrapped around either propeller shaft. Charged us $20, we gave him $40.

There was no more vibration after we left the marina, because of the advice that Paul gave Rob in 2015. In order to maneuver in to the slip at the Gulfport Marina, Rob had to put each engine in reverse, then forward, alternately a few times. Each time he put the starboard engine in reverse it unwound the line. We wish he had remembered that earlier in the day. Maybe next year.

Saturday April 7th we leave Fort Myers and move east through the Okeechobee for home.

Best to all
Tricia