Clearwater to Gulfport

My niece came to visit my parents for a week to see their new digs in The Villages. It didn't take much convincing to get her to come to the boat and take a small cruise with us. They all drove down last night, but she got spend the night with us. Then we all took a 3 hour trip to Gulfport.

It was a lovely Saturday, sunny and warm, so everyone who owns or rents a boat was out enjoying the water. Normally that can be a thing, but a large part of the voyage today was through "The Narrows," which is also a minimum wake zone. And for the most part everyone behaved themselves.

When we arrived at the marina they didn't know where to put us. We docked along the fuel dock while they worked it out. The eventually sent us to an open slip.

Bunches of boats out today

For some reason, the last few marinas we've been to don't take our beam seriously. We tell them it's 16. We are 16 feet wide. They nod their heads and say, yep, you'll fit in that slip. And we squeak our way into it with the aid of a little vaseline on the rub rail. People, when we say we're 16 we mean we're 16, so don't put us into a 16 foot wide slip!

Our slip here 16' 4". We have literally 2 inches on either side of us.

That said, I can back into a teeny, tiny slip these days with no issue. So, silver lining.

My niece was tickled to see dolphins on our wake. 

As we are, each and everytime.