Tarpon Springs!

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 218 - November 5, 2017

We woke up at Bayport this morning in pea soup fog!   Although the clocks changed from daylight savings time to standard time, we were biologically still on daylight savings time, and got up an hour early.  Fog or not, Baxter still needed his shore trip, so I paddled to the boat ramp and back in the fog!

Pat and Baxter in kayak in the fog!

Just as we were coming alongside the boat in the kayak, I heard a loud splash near the shore, and glanced over. I'm pretty sure this was our first real alligator sighting! Even though everything we have read and heard about alligators is that they are shy, and usually don't bother people, I wasted no time getting Baxter and then myself back on the boat! Baxter rides in a very precarious spot, and a little dog in the water, or even in a kayak, might be a tempting snack for an alligator! We got the binoculars out and scanned the water near the shore, but did not see anything else.

Our friend Jonathan Arthur, who just completed his THIRD Loop on his 22 foot C-Dory Salty, called this morning because he saw we were at Bayport, and he wanted to urge us to cruise up the Wiki Wachee, which he says is one of his favorite rivers. He also asked where we would be staying in Tarpon Springs, and when I told him the City Marina, he was a bit down on it. He said the docks are lousy (or something like that) and there are a lot of people going by on the street. On the first count, yes, the docks are pilings and little fixed finger piers, and it has been exciting getting on and off the boat at low tide, when the finger pier is three or four feet above the boat, but we have managed. The Harbor Master says floating docks are coming next year - too late for us! On the second count, to us being right on the Sponge Docks, where everything is close at hand, is a big plus. They also have just completed a very nice private bathroom with a great shower for boaters. So all in all, we are not sorry we are here. It would have been a lot more difficult to do everything we did if we had been at a marina across the Anclote River!

The Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center occupies the other half of the marina office building, and the lady there was very helpful. We left with a fistful of maps and guides to the area, which we will probably look at more closely tomorrow morning. We also asked her which was her favorite Greek restaurant, and both she and the Harbor Master said without hesitation that it was Hellas, so we plan to have dinner there tomorrow.

Tarpon Springs City Marina and Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center

Tarpon Springs is known as the "Sponge Capital of the World." The City Marina is on Dodecanese Boulevard, and is at the start of the Sponge Docks, an area now mostly occupied by Greek restaurants, gift shops, specialty shops (tea, spice, olive oil), and lots of sponge shops. The waterfront now has mostly tour boats and charter fishing boats. The Sponge Docks are the historic home of the sponge diving fleet and the Sponge Exchange, where the sponges brought in were bought and sold.

The first settlers in Tarpon Springs were A.W. Omond, who arrived in 1876. Mary married J.C. Boyer, and they lived on Spring Bayou. Mary loved the fish she saw leaping in the air, and she named the settlement Tarpon Springs. Actually, the fish were not tarpon but mullet! But Tarpon Springs certainly sounds better than Mullet Springs would have!

In 1880, Hamilton Disston, son of Disston Saw Company founder Henry Disston, bought four million acres of the central west coast of Florida from the State of Florida for 25 cents an acre. This saved the state from bankruptcy. Included in the purchase was Tarpon Springs. Tarpon Springs got a post office in 1884 and was incorporated in 1887. 

One of Disston's promoters, John Cheney, found that money could be made by harvesting sponges from the Gulf, and by 1890, the Cheney Sponge Company sold almost a million dollars worth of sponges. 

The most experienced sponge divers in the world were from Greece, and by 1905, 500 Greek sponge divers were working from 50 sponge dive boats.  Greek restaurants opened on the Sponge Docks to feed the boat crews. For 30 years, the sponge industry was Florida's largest industry, larger even than citrus. In the 1940s, blight severely impacted the sponge industry, and by the 1950s, the industry was nearly wiped out. Fortunately, in the 1980s, new sponge beds were found, and Tarpon Springs is once again a world leader in the production of natural sponges. 

So, what is a sponge? I did a Google search and compiled information from several sources.  Although sponges look like plants, they are actually a simple form of multicellular animal. They are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular and produce sperm cells, but unlike other animals, they lack true tissues and organs, and have no body symmetry.  Sponges are bottom dwellers that attach themselves to something solid, and their bodies filter water flowing through their central cavities, so they can receive enough food to grow. So now you know everything I know about sponges!

We got here early enough in the afternoon to walk along the Sponge Docks. We first wandered into a sponge shop that was showing a movie in its little theater about the early days for sponge diving.  I don't know, but I am guessing the film was from the 1930s or 1940s. The divers wore dive suits made from waterproof canvas and helmets with an air line to the sponge boat. The things the divers feared most were sharks, fouled air lines, and the bends. This movie was actually great background about Tarpon Springs and the sponge industry.

Sponge diver statue

Dodecanese Boulevard was barricaded for several blocks for a maritime festival with a number of displays and booths. I stopped to talk with a boat builder named Paul, who was part of the Florida Gulf Coast TSCA (Traditional Small Craft Association). He had a small wooden boat that he had built, and said that it was the boat that he used the most. I said I would like to try building a boat like that but doubted I could do it.  He told me how he had built this boat using plans and patterns, and that it was made from nine pieces of plywood, one 1 x 6, and a lot of 1 x 2s. He said the main requirement was not skill but patience! I also told him we were doing the Great Loop, and showed him a photo of Daydream.  He said he saw us come in, and thought it was a great looking boat. Probably several hundred boats had passed since we had come in, so it is remarkable to me that he remembered seeing us come in!

Paul's tools for building traditional small wooden boats

Paul and his small wooden boat

Sponge dive helmet and its maker

We poked our noses into a couple of other shops but decided we would leave shopping for tomorrow, because we wanted to go back to the boat to listen to the Seattle Seahawks game via streaming radio over the internet. As Seattle fans know, we need not have bothered, as Seattle was a bit off its game! The last things we did were make dinner reservations for tomorrow evening at Hellas Greek Restaurant, buy baklava for dessert and stop at Yianni's Greek Restaurant to buy a take-out Greek salad to go with the Ruby Reds (fabulous shrimp) that Marie Austin had bought at Joe Patti's Seafood in Pensacola that we had taken out of our freezer earlier in the day! 

Greek salad  - brings back fond memories of Evan and Jeanne Chiligiris in Chicago!

 

Ruby Reds cooked in salted water with Zatarains Shrimp and Crab Boil - thanks, Marie!

Tomorrow we'll take the Jolly Trolley and do our sightseeing and shopping!