Across The Gulf

Many thanks to all of you and your kind thoughts and messages before, during, and after our crossing of the Gulf of Mexico on Friday night to Saturday morning... and especially to Cathryn and Bob from Next To Me and Olalla Bay who monitored us and our float plan. It all went very well with a spell of beam seas to wallow us back and forth. Once we got past the rock n' roll part of the journey, the winds were behind us and pushed us on in to our marker.

Someone asked us..."just how in the heck are you going to do this?" It sounded a little like the old phrase... "oh ye of little faith" was in order! As those of you who have done this before, you know that it is all in the preparation, establishing a mindset,  developing a crossing plan, and establishing confidence in yourselves and your boat.

We had the good fortune to meet up with 3 people from Kansas on another boat [ JuLi IV ] who were waiting to do the crossing as well. Tim, Beth, and Joe had been in Carrabelle since Friday and pretty much knew the town.

They were more than happy to show us around the high spots. During our time together we were able to develop a strategy for the crossing.

Along the way they showed us land-based hazards to avoid,

sea-based hazards to avoid,

THE place to dine in town,

and the location of the Snip and Clip for Bob's much needed haircut.

As we further walked the streets of Carrabelle we came upon the police station. After a short visit which required that no bail be paid, we continued on with our first strategy meeting.

This was held at the Carrabelle Junction which has an old fashioned soda fountain and the best milk shakes we've had in a long time.

The purpose of this was to prepare our stomachs for the next stop. That would be Harry's Bar.

This place was quite a joint filled with a bunch of regulars. The ambiance was "special" and helped us develop a mindset for the trip.

Anxiety was not an issue here and relaxation ruled the day. I guess we can get worried later on if we feel a need to do so.

Since excellent preparation is the details we spared no time or expense to procure the maps and aids to navigation to help us cross.

Tim asked me if I was going to have to go around the corner where AAA lists the towns or could I go straight through? With these navigational wonders we were able to develop our float plan from Carrabelle to Tarpon Springs.

So now we have the preparation all set, the crossing plan established , the mindset in place, and the longer we stayed at Harry's Bar the more confident we became.

OR MAYBE we prepared a little differently than that.... checking our fuel levels,

oil levels,

the seawater strainers that go to the engine and the generator.

AND MAYBE we used our fantastic suite of Garmin chartplotter, depth sounder, radar, and autopilot to help us navigate the crossing.

AND MAYBE we used our I-pad based Blue Garmin chart system as a back up.

AND MAYBE plotted our course on our MapTeck Chart Kit as another backup.

So after all this we left our moorage about 2:00PM on Friday and headed for the first mark which was about 8-10 miles from our dock.

From there we we able to use the touch screen technology to plot our straight line course across the Gulf to a marker about 15 miles from downtown Tarpon Springs.

Next we kicked in [engaged"] the autopilot...

and took turns monitoring all the systems.                          

The crossing started with 1-2 waves quartering off the bow. This was not bad at all as we were running about 7-8 mph the whole time. Later the wind and waves came abeam and finally for the last 50 miles were on our stern so pushed us on in to our marker on the other side.... nearly right on time.

The sunset at about 7:45 and was spectacular. After many years of trying to see it in Hawaii, I finally saw the "green flash" as the sun descended below the horizon.

We were treated to 3-4 dolphins swimming with us as the sun went down. We felt that this had to be a good omen. They are darn hard to catch on film though!

Shortly after that the tiny sliver of a moon came out. It was already descending when it made its appearance so it only stayed around until about midnight. Then it got really dark. Here is a picture of the Gulf of Mexico at night.... when the moon is gone.

During the crossing we had our radar on and saw a few other boats and communicated with one as they were overtaking us on their way to Clearwater. It was otherwise a quiet, long, nearly sleepless night. Overall, it was a good crossing. No one got seasick and the seas were fair enough.

Now the ace we had up our sleeve was that we were parked behind a State of Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission boat/ship when we were in port. It had to be a hundred feet long.

This was the last part of our strategy if we ran into trouble out in the middle of the Gulf, I felt that all we had to do was call them and tell them that we had a dolphin caught in our prop or that we saw a beloved "snaildarter" out there or perhaps a "spotted owl"... anything protected .... and they would fire that big boat up and come find us real quick!


Nautical Word For The Day: [from seatalk.info]

Wake:

1. Waves emanating from a vessel as it passes through the water.

From Great Loop Jargon:

2. Being part Irish it is their equivalent to a funeral celebration and certainly involves minimal quantities of Irish wiskey.... but no maximum! I guess that would happen if the crossing had not gone so well!!!