After the tragic fire at the museum in early September, the Gulfport Historical Society can certainly use our help to continue their important educational and environmental work. See below for how to help. Gulfport Municipal Marina, A CRUISERS’ NET SPONSOR, and the City of Gulfport always have a full calendar of events for all ages. The marina and harbor, found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay, are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW, just north of Tampa Bay. 

It feels like it’s been a lifetime since we had the opening reception for Read All About It: 50 Years of Hyperlocal News.

That exhibit was an exciting time for the Gulfport Historical Society, because it represented a new chapter in how we worked with the community to share our history. I was over-the-moon excited about so many facets of the exhibit, and the Gabber shared some of their artifacts — the original phone from the newspaper, photographs never before seen by anyone outside the newspaper staff and other one-of-a-kind items that you’d only be able to see at the Gulfport History Museum.

The owners of the Gabber put their trust in us to keep those items safe. Two weeks after that exhibit opened, I had to tell the owners of the paper their items had significant smoke damage. They’ve been gracious and supportive, and I — along with the rest of the board of directors — cannot thank them enough for that, and their support.

Fortunately, insurance is covering the cost of repairing those artifacts. It’s also covering replacing our porch, our floor and restoring all the documents damaged by soot and fire.

It will not cover the cost of archiving and digitizing our town’s records — tax rolls, original maps, photographs, and other historical records.

Like The Gabber, Gulfport’s families, residents, government and community have placed their trust in us. They — you — trust us to keep your history and memories safe.

Since the Labor Day Fire, this thought has hung over me like a dark cloud.

What if there hadn’t been a meeting next door and no one had called 911 right away?

What if a tree had fallen on the museum during Hurricane Irma, like it did to this museum during Hurricane Michael?

What if Hurricane Michael had hit us instead?

What if the next hurricane does hit us?

In every one of those scenarios, the Gulfport Historical Society would lose most — if not all — of our town’s history. And what has weighed on my mind so heavily is that we might not be so lucky next time.

I’m not willing to gamble with our town’s heritage. What we have in Gulfport — what we’ve built since the Barnetts made landfall at Barnett’s Bluff towards the end of the Civil War — is far too special to risk. As the head of the Gulfport Historical Society, our community has trusted me to make sure I do everything I can to minimize the risk of losing everything that makes Gulfport special.

As we’ve mentioned in the days following the Labor Day Fire, we need funding to digitize the collection. That includes proper archival processes (to retard decay) in addition to unbinding books, scanning and re-binding books. It’s not a simple matter of getting a scanner and saving the items to the cloud (oh, how I wish it were). The handling of the records themselves require specific protocols.

Many of you have already been quite generous with your donations, and we thank you — I thank you — for that. But we still need more money; digitization is expensive. It will be worth it; once complete, people anywhere in the world will be able to search through our records and photographs. And — most importantly — those records and photographs will be safe from fire, hurricanes or random acts of disaster.

We need your help. Here’s how you can help protect our community’s heritage:

1. Donate. Whatever you can. Even $5 helps. You can also donate at the Gulfport Beach Bazaar.

2. Make monthly donations — easily. We can debit your checking account or credit card for any amount you choose, from $5 to $100.

3. Pre-order a commemorative Labor Day Fire t-shirt or postcard. Local artist Steve Smith based his design on a screenshot from a video taken of the fire.

4. Visit the Gulfport Beach Bazaar and buy something from the our Square Mullet Gift Shop. We have books by local authors, coffee mugs, portable dog bowls, and a myriad of other items.

5. Become a member. We have membership levels for every budget, and you can pay for your membership over the course of one year. While the cost of your membership isn’t tax-deductible, it does come with lots of other benefits.

6. Become a business member. Benefits include newsletter advertising and other perks.

7. Volunteer with us. We need volunteers at our events — we need people who can get comfortable using the Square for our booth at Holiday Hoopla, we need people we can train as tour guides and we need people to check in folks at our twice-monthly original walking tours. If you can help with any or all of these things, you can sign up here. If you’d like to be a tour guide, please reach out to Cathy Salustri via email.

Whatever you choose to do, thank you for your support, your kind words when we pass on the street, and for being a part of our amazing, resilient, historical community.

Cathy
Copyright © 2018 Gulfport Historical Society, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email from the Gulfport Historical Society because you signed up to receive emails from the city of Gulfport. However, this is a new mailing list independent of the city. You may unsubscribe from this list at any time.

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5301 28th Avenue South
Gulfport, FL 33707

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After this tragedy, the Gulfport Historical Society can certainly use our help to keep their important educational and environmental work going, see https://cruisersnet.net/173192. See below for how to help. Gulfport Municipal Marina, A CRUISERS’ NET SPONSOR, and the City of Gulfport always have a full calendar of events for all ages. The marina and harbor, found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay, are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW, just north of Tampa Bay. 

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What a day this has been.

This morning, we had a fire at the Gulfport History Museum.

Most importantly, no one was hurt. This is the thing we must bear in mind as we move forward. No. One. Was. Hurt.

It could have been far, far worse. The quick actions of the Gulfport — and St. Petersburg — fire department spared most of the building as well as paper records and photographs. They risked their lives to save our town’s history this morning — if they hadn’t been so quick to act, everything would be lost. As it stands now, it looks like our main historic losses are the historic Shuffleboard Club sign and the Gulfport Historic Register sign (we’ll know more after the investigation is complete and we can conduct a full assessment). These things are not replaceable, and their loss is real and tragic.

Thanks, too, to the Gulfport PD for being on hand, assisting and apprehending a suspect.
We also want to thank everyone who stopped by to tell investigators what they saw, extend their sympathy and join with us in our communal heartbreak. We also want to thank representatives from Gulfport Beach Bazaar and Stella’s, and councilfolk Paul Ray and Christine Anne Brown, who wanted to see how they could help — along with countless others we’re probably too addled to properly thank.

We were touched by all of your support, and also by the number of people asking how they could help. Thank you for the special trip you made to tell us you wanted to help; your kindness to us and reverence for our history touches us.

Finally, we want to thank the city staff who came in before 8 a.m. on their day off to help us with debris clearing and securing the museum. Your dedication to this community means more to us all than you will ever know.

We don’t know what lies ahead, but we’re still here. We’re just a little… charred… right now (here are some photos of what the inside of the museum looks like, and for those of you not in town, what damage the outside suffered).

We’re seeing a lot of talk on social media right now, about arson and who it might have been. Please remember the important things: no one was injured, the losses could have been far greater, and mental illness is a disease. It is our most sincere hope that if it was arson, whoever set the fire — for whatever reason — is able to get the help they need in a safe place. Our hearts break for them and what must be happening in their head.

While we can’t replace the historical items that were lost, we can take steps to further protect our records. Since Hurricane Irma swept through town almost one year ago exactly, we’ve had some big discussions on how to safeguard our town’s history.

What we know we need to do: We need to digitize all our photographs and records — which include historic maps, charts, property information, historic records of construction, property tax records, the Seabreeze and Gulfport Tribune… the list goes on and on. Quite frankly, it’s overwhelming to think about what needs to be done, in part because it’s beyond our immediate ability to do so.

There are, of course, services that can do this — Olive Software has met with us (along with the head of the library, David Mather) about digitizing the collection. They’ve done this for other local groups — take a look at how they’ve archived Dunedin’s records and made them searchable.

This is the most prudent course of action for the Gulfport Historical Society. It will keep our history preserved in perpetuity, safe from any act of nature (or person), and it makes it accessible to people not within striking distance of the physical museum. That means those of you who don’t live in Pinellas County would be able to look at all our records and pictures — and search them to find exactly what you wanted to find — anytime you wanted.

So what’s stopping us?

Excellent question.

Money. It’s all about money. To take the whole of our paper records and images, digitize them, give us a digital copy and maintain an online searchable database of Gulfport’s history is the best possible thing we, as a society entrusted with safeguarding the town’s history, could possibly do. However, the price tag is somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000.

Right.

We’d discussed hiring someone to do development to raise the money, but that’s not something to be taken lightly and the board hadn’t yet voted on this. So many people have asked us today, “What can I do?” it seems the best response we can give you is this:

Donate so we can afford to digitize our history. Insurance money will replace the porch. We can find great porch furniture somewhere (the last set was donated), and there’s nothing we can do to replace the two artifacts we lost today (and, again, how blessed were we to only lose two? Thank you so much, Gulfport and St. Pete firefighters), but we’ve now dodged two potentially devastating bullets: Hurricane Irma and the Labor Day Fire.

The third time, as they say, is the charm. That’s why we’re asking you to donate in case we aren’t lucky one more time. We don’t care if it’s $20,000 or 20¢; every penny helps.

Every. Penny. Helps.

You have trusted us with your history but we need your help to keep it truly safe. Please help preserve Gulfport’s history. Donate here.

We cannot do this without you.

I’m certain, in a week or two, our brilliant board will come up with donor gifts and rewards, but right now, tonight, it’s important we get your donation. It’s important we start to move forward on what we need to do — save Gulfport’s history for the future. This is why I’m asking you — without artifice, and without any glossy sales pitch — to please, please help us avoid losing everything.

Thank you for your support. As we say so often — and we mean it — we cannot do this without you.

Thank you, Gulfport.

Cathy
Cathy Salustri Loper, President, Gulfport Historical Society.
Copyright © 2018 Gulfport Historical Society, All rights reserved.
is is a new mailing list independent of the city. You may unsubscribe from this list at any time.

Our mailing address is:
Gulfport Historical Society
5301 28th Avenue South
Gulfport, FL 33707

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Johns Pass connects the Gulf with the Waterway at Mile 123 north of St. Petersburg. See https://cruisersnet.net/168527 for a earlier off-station buoy report. And note this LNM and observations about buoy placement in our chartlet and on the full chart. Our recommendation is to keep the Green markers on your port side when entering. Our thanks to Torie Cannon for this report.

Friends of ours were coming Johns Pass this weekend and went hard aground causing serious damage to their 39’ Gulfstar Sailmaster. They were taking on water and beached the boat just inside the pass to prevent her from totally sinking. Then hailed SeaTow or Boat US to assist. They did manage to get hauled this weekend but not before a lot of water was in the boat. The towing company quickly showed up with pumps and manage to get them afloat at towed them to a near by yard for haul out. When I heard about the other boat going aground I thought old boat and newbies are a bad combination. But our friends have been in and out of the pass enough to know it. I think last time was about 6 months ago. Something is not marked in that pass.
Torie Cannon

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Gulfport Municipal Marina, A SALTY SOUTHEAST CRUISERS’ NET SPONSOR, has a full calendar of events for all ages. The marina and harbor, found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay, are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW, just north of Tampa Bay.

Weekly highlights from the City of Gulfport

Plan your calendar with the City of Gulfport Florida!
December 12 – 18, 2016

http://mygulfport.us/eventsmeeting-calendar

Visit Our Website

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One of our newest SALTY SOUTHEAST CRUISERS’ NET SPONSORS, Gulfport Municipal Marina has recently undergone renovations and is also adding a nearby mooring field. The marina and harbor are found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay and are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW near Statute Mile 115, just north of Tampa Bay.

Looking for crew for our Catalina 309, located in Gulfport on Boca Giega Bay.
Barbara and Frank Downward

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The Veterans Hospital Anchorage lies in northern Boca Ciega Bay northeast of the ICW’s flashing daybeacon #6 between Tampa and Clearwater.

We anchored here last night and it was beautiful and calm. Lots of room but wide open to southerly breezes. Can be busy on weekends and wave action since it’s in a wake zone and close to Johns Pass, which is a popular inlet for fishing in the gulf. Close to a bridge so there is some traffic noise but not bad. It was super calm last night which made this a perfect place to drop the hook. We didn’t drop the dinghy to explore but did hear about the dock and McDonalds and shopping nearby.

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Our thanks to faithful contributor David Burnham for sending us this Facebook video by Dan Liedtke of a derelict vessel being removed from Boca Ciega Bay, which is home to SALTY SOUTHEAST CRUISERS’ NET SPONSOR, Gulfport Municipal Marina. The marina and harbor are found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay and are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW, just north of Tampa Bay.

https://www.facebook.com/DanRLiedtke/videos/1068989299805807/

Click Here To View the Cruisers’ Net’s Western Florida Marina Directory Listing For Gulfport Municipal Marina

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One of our newest SALTY SOUTHEAST CRUISERS’ NET SPONSORS, Gulfport Municipal Marina has recently undergone renovations and also has a nearby mooring field. The marina and harbor are found on the northern shores of Boca Ciega Bay and are easily accessible from the Western Florida ICW, just north of Tampa Bay.

We at Gulfport Municipal Marina are proud to announce that we have teamed up with Dockwa, a state-of-the-art reservation management system making big waves in the boating world.

From now on, you can easily make reservations at Gulfport Municipal Marina along with 100+ other premium locations using your smart phone or computer. It’s simple: Download their app in the ITunes Store or the Google Play Store, or visit www.dockwa.com.

Our new partnership with Dockwa will help you get more use out of your boat and make your life easier.

Just Tap.Book.Dock. If you have any questions, feel free to let us know.

Thanks,

Gulfport Municipal Marina

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Grassroots movement hopes to rid Boca Ciega Bay of derelict boats

Date Reported: Jul 15, 2015
Reported By: Mike Ahart, News Editor

A grassroots movement has started up around Boca Ciega Bay to help rid the area of its growing derelict boat problem.

How has your community solved or reduced its derelict boat problem? Citizens Against Derelict and Illegal Boats (CADIB) wants to know ‘“ and wants others in their own communty to help. CADIB’s mission statement: “To protect our waterways from the environmental and navigational hazards that arise from derelict and illegal vessels.”

According to Grant Bond, one of the organizers of CADIB, “We would like to learn from and help other areas that have been affected by this problem. We (know) our current situation in Gulfport Florida…about 30-50 vessels dragging anchors, half of them have no registration or no current registration. I have lived on the water for 3 years and have seen 6 boats wash up on residential seawalls, 5 sunken vessels sitting on top of protected mangroves in Clam Bayou and at least 2 have caused damage to city property.”

So far, CADIB has been keeping track of boats and registration, and members have attended city council meetings to help keep the issue in the forefront. If you would like to help CADIB on the water or with ideas, contact by email CADIBgulfport@gmail.com

“Join us in the fight to keep our waterways to their natural beauty.” Visit the brand-new CADIB website for updates.

CLICK HERE for the full story.

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Each year the Cape Coral Cruise Club makes an extended cruise and, after visiting several marinas on the Gulf Coast, sends us their reports. This report is one of eight marinas they visited in April. Clearwater Municipal Marina flanks the well-marked Clearwater Beach Channel just southwest of the high-rise Clearwater Memorial Causeway Bridge

Our first stop on the return trip was a single night at Clearwater Beach Marina. The dock master was alone, and overwhelmed with our arrival, so it was up to the members to help get all our boats secured up in the slips. A short walk had several members taking in the fabulous Clearwater beach along with its several bars and restaurants.

Click Here To View the Cruisers’ Net’s Western Florida Marina Directory Listing For Clearwater Municipal Marina

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Redington Shores Anchorage is found on the charted cove south of unlighted daybeacon #1 off the northwestern tip of Boca Ciega Bay. Our thanks to Laura for this thorough description of this Gulf Waterway anchorage.

We stayed at this anchorage for 2 nights week of March 23rd and it was SUPER nice. We were guided in by the instructions in Claiborne’s Cruising Guide and he was spot on. It is very shallow in the middle of this anchorage, so hugging the Southern shoreline it was plenty deep. There are two restaurants nearby, Seabreeze and Wahoo’s – we ate at Seabreeze one night and the food was good. There is Happy Hour all day every day $2 drafts and they have some inexpensive bar food items ($4.99 grouper cheeks, and some other tasty items as well) There is a public park with a dock to get off and walk across the street to the beach. There is a 7-Eleven within walking distance for ice ($2.99 a bag) and whatnot. There’s a trolley that runs the whole length of the beach as well, if you really want to go exploring, it’s very reasonable. The water was deepest just off the fishing boat fleet, we had no problems. There is a bank of high rise condos to the South but they didn’t bother us, and most people were nice. We even had one guy track us down at the bar as he admired our boat out there, and we met some nice folks. We will definitely be back to this anchorage.
Laura

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