The Gulf Crossing...What a Great Experience!

Carrabelle is a small old Florida city.  We took some nice walks and enjoyed nice 70 degree weather for the three days we were there.  The Moorings marina staff was kind and courteous but one could tell the complex of condos, hotel and marina was past its prime.  Tough economic conditions clearly contributed to the decline.  Too bad because it was a pretty nice spot on the river.  Not a place we would have wanted to spend more time at though....so fortunately our crossing weather window opened and we left at noon on Wed.  Leaving Carrabelle

OK, I will admit it, I was quite apprehensive about a pitch black darkness 170 mile journey.  Julie as always just took it in stride and said "Don't worry about it, it will be great".  What can go wrong, right?  Well I could think of a hundred things but we readied the boat putting things that could move around away, checking engine room, packing ditch bag, readying dinghy for launch, having offshore life vests at ready, etc. 
But let me digress a bit.  A number of folks have asked why a night crossing?  Well the day only crossing requires an average speed of about 17MPH to make the trip in daylight leaving right at day break given the distance and the short days at this time of year. That is almost exactly our boat's top cruising speed.  So if we would have any need to stop to change a fuel filter or something similar, we would be out of light entering an unfamiliar winding river on the other end and at lower tide to boot, not a great idea. It would also burn one heck of a lot of diesel fuel at about 30 gallons per hour at that speed. So for all these reasons we finally planned a night crossing.
One cannot arrive too early travelling east into the sun as there are hundreds of crab pots to dodge and the glaring rising sun would not be good to see them in.  So with high tide at roughly noon, we wanted to arrive at the entrance to the inter coastal near Tarpon Springs at 10:30 or so.  We also like to travel moving at least 9 MPH if not a bit faster.  All the other boats at the marina wanted to travel at 8 MPH so would be leaving early afternoon.  Here they are leaving.  Zoom in on the pic with the hat and you will see 8 boats out in the gulf.

 

Our idle speed is almost 7 MPH and idling the diesels for 20+ hours did not appeal to me.  So we called Sonny and Phyllis on Corkscrew, a boat we met in St Andrews Marina in Panama City, and found they wanted to go to Tarpon Springs and travel between 9 and 10 MPH. So the plan came together....
We left Carrabelle Moorings marina around noon and anchored out at Dog Island near Corkscrew just around the corner from East Pass where we would enter the Gulf.  Corkscrew at anchor:

This did a couple things, got us 7 miles closer to our destination, allowed us to nap, put us in a position to leave East Pass right at sunset, etc. We pulled anchor and entered the Gulf as the sun was setting.  A 9MPH cruising speed should get us to Tarpon Springs at 10:30 according to the chart plotter and my calculations...we'll see how that goes!  The line on the chart shows our intended course:

Getting started

sunset on the gulf

 

So first thing was to set the auto pilot on that waypoint 150 miles SW.  Done.  ETA 10:30 AM Thursday at our 9 MPH.  Perfect start. Corkscrew does the same about 1/2 mile behind us.  All is good.  As night sets in how to dim all the lights on electronics, indicator lights on the dash, heating/cooling thermostat read outs, etc. is the task at hand.  Ahh, that white duct tape works great for those pesky indicator lights and stairway courtesy lights that were too bright, and the owners manual was consulted for a couple electronic devices I had forgotten how to dim.  We wanted to preserve our night vision with all that activity...well, guess what, with no moon you could not see anything except all of the stars in the sky any ways!  The reflection of Venus (I think) on the water was about the only light.  So the dimly lit radar screen was our friend all night. 

And we moved ahead at 9MPH with only radar and charted buoys, etc on the chart plotter to"see" what was ahead.  At first this was a bit unnerving, but it is a big gulf and there can't be too many floating objects that could sink us right?  Sure hope that is right!  So we "checked in" with Corkscrew once per hour just to check on each other and the night moved on.  Engine gauge check, radar check, etc. 
Another thing about the dark from Julie's perspective. As many know she does get seasick and we had some pretty good rolling at times with the 2 foot waves out there.  But she says that the inability to see ahead actually helped her condition.  Interesting.
At our 10 PM check in we also heard from Sunny Days ahead of us travelling to Clearwater.  They asked if we had heard the may day call.  No we had not but later we heard the Coast Guard hailing Blue Haven (one of the boats who left earlier ahead of us). for their input into what they heard on the may day.  We could only hear the CG side of the conversation but the CG continued to broadcast the may day information for mariners to be on the watch.  Later Julie heard the Air Force hail a couple fishing vessels for information on the may day as well.  Julie woke me up as the Air Force was asking the fishing vessels for their position and she could not recall how to show ours on the chart plotter. (darn old non user friendly Raymarine stuff....she knew how to do it on the Garmin in the Sea Ray). But they did not call us.  Our thought is that this may day was yet another hoax as we have not heard anything further.
Other than that, a quiet and peaceful passage. We saw one shrimper all lit up, but other than that saw no one.  It began to get light around 5:30 AM which was quite welcome. 

 

The dolphins again were amazing. Here they are just ahead of the bow wave.  Unbelievable. The videos just do not do them justice but you will get a sense.  It is just amazing to see them 2 or 3 hundred yards from the boat and then turn and make a beeline towards the boat to play in the wakes.  We just cannot get enough of them!

 

We arrived at buoy R2 right on plan, 10:30.  And as we had planned, there were lots of crab pots to navigate through as we steered east into the Tarpon Springs area. Both of us with binoculars was necessary at times.   We bid farewell to our crossing boat buddy Corkscrew as they were travelling on to Dunedin.  We hope we see them again down the way.  We made our way the last 7 or 8 miles to the Turtle Cove marina at high tide as recommended for our draft.

We backed into a very tight slip, washed the salt off the boat and took a nap.  We then met up with the others who came here earlier (some of the group who left Carrabelle earlier in the day) and had a great fresh seafood dinner at Rusty Bellies to celebrate the crossing.

Here is a dinner we had with our crossing partners Sonny and Phyliss from Corkscrew. 

 

Funny story.  We thought that when we met them in St Andrews they said they were veteran (Gold) Loopers.  So we thought it a bit funny that they wanted us to lead.  Well we found out we had them confused with another boat and they were navigating on an iPad!  Phyliss remarked at our celebration dinner that she was so thankful for our stern light leading the way all night.  Ignorance is bliss!

Another Rusty Bellies shot....

 

 

So to recap....Julie was right, the crossing was great and we have this major portion of our adventure behind us.  It was a great experience!!
We had fun exploring Tarpon Springs and its Greek and sponge diving heritage. Even attended the Christmas parade:

 Next up, we look forward to Sarah and Joe's visit starting Sunday when they will meet us at Clearwater Beach Marina.