I made us hashed browns and scrambled eggs, as this is the beginning of our crossing day, and we wanted to be firing on all pistons. It certainly felt good to have a full tummy, after a light dinner of Pasta e Fagoli - my Italian bean and pasta soup.
Good thing I had made a huge pot full of soup..it became the default meal for 24 hrs! BAD thing is, it is full of BEANS! and it gave us tummy aches and the appropriate results, but the air was a bit blue around here for a couple of days, :)
Robyn and Dave had to refuel further up the river behind us, so their plan was to leave the dock on the dot of 11am. We stood by ready to start the engines when they turned the corner to where we were waiting. It took a bit longer than anticipated for them to appear, but we were all well within our time limit to get where we were going.
Waz kindly made it easy for me to cast off the ropes from the boat, rather than having to do so from the dock and then do the splits to get back aboard...the way he does...and still did, I might add.
With no wind to speak of, we pushed hard away from the dock and followed Blue Moon out the skinny channel and into the other skinny channel that twisted and turned through the Bay, under the bridge that goes to St George Island (look that one up, it is gorgeous over there!)and down through St George Sound towards East Pass, our escape hatch in the middle of the channel between Dog Island and St Georges Island.
We had collectively decided not to go to Carrabelle, where the other boats were waiting, because the trip there from A was only 2 hrs, and no need to us to go up yet another skinny channel to see a small town geared to Loopers, at this time of year.
This chartplotter image shows us sitting on the dock in A. B;ue Moon was readying to go to refuel, and we were making our last minute preparations ready for our overnight 'ordeal....so we thought.
The weather forecast was extremely favorable, thankfully, forecasting 1-2ft waves, clear skies and about midnight 2-4 ft waves, maybe. After that it should calm and our passage should be free of trouble.
A last look out the
glas before pushing off.
...and we are away!
Following Blue Moon out through the narrow channel (just one of oh so many) on the way to East Pass. You can see the buoys on left and right. Green on right, and red on left going out.
As we leave A, we go under the bridge that meets the causeway going across to St George Island.
On the other side of the bridge looking left, these marshes amble out into the bay. These marshes have been infiltrated by palms of all kinds and what looks to be papyrus.
The very shallow waters are cluttered with 'stuff'.
We had watched this fellow most of Saturday, having a ball flying around, landing/taking off and generally having fun in and around the A area. He flew out with us and then around us several times...him looking at us, and we at him:)
The St Georges Causeway..or a small part of it.
Eagles! and not the same one...these were a little way away from each other.
The end of St Georges Island and coming up to the East Pass which goes between Dog Island on the left and St. G's Island on the right.
It is now 2.20pm, and Blue Moon and we are making our way through East Pass.
Blue Moon, ahead of us, going through the pass into the open water of the Gulf of Mexico and about to set our charts for R4, the marker that denotes the end of our run across the Gulf and the entry to Anclote Key on the south west Florida coast, near Tarpon Springs, if you are looking for this on google earth.
Here we are on the chart just leaving East Pass and into open water
This is what you get when two wakes arrive at the same point when at right angles to each other:) We had moved out of Blue Moon's wake to parallel them a 1/4 mile to their port side.
A happy camper, Captain Waz :) totally chilled out at the helm. Did we need the red blanket by his right arm? only when it got a bit chilly up on deck as the sun was going down.
Out in open water as the sun is sinking
We had the pleasure of a 'Sun Dog' which is created by ice crystals, adjacent to the sun and because of it's setting. Quite lovely.
The sun at around 5pm.,,,going, going...
The light beacons that you can see as yellow thingys on the chart are owned by the Airforce (Govt.) and they were about 3-5 miles out from Dog Island.
Pure GOLD on the water:)
The sea was at a leisurely 1-2 feet before almost flattening out, but having a little swell, so that we slowly rocked and rolled. The best kind of conditions we could have hoped for, and by the time we were in open water, with the other boats around us, we were happy, all of us. Nice to have the company within a mile or 10 of the others, I have to say.
Robyn and I had been a couple of 'nervous Nellies' about this crossing at night. Well, if you have never done any open water cruising/sailing, then it is a bit nerve wracking...don't laugh!
...going....
TOUCH DOWN!
It took a while for all the red in the sky to disappear, and it was lovely watching it. We saw Robyn go up on deck a couple of times to take photos, them being only a 1/4 mile from us.
Waz and Dave did all the math and setting of points on the charts, and estimations, and of course because we were running parallel to them most of the time, we could see their lights on our Starb'd side and it was a great comfort to see that. Robyn said the same thing, last night.
Because we don't have radar upstairs on the flybridge, we had to come down into the Pilot house to steer and keep and eye on things when it finally got dark. We couldn't afford to be coming into Tarpon Springs too early as there are crab pots out in the channel that we had to take to get into the markers and up the channel to Tarpon Springs. Bloody things!!! You certainly don't want a crab pot line around you propeller...and if we were unlucky enough to do so, there is no way we were going to stop and go diving to remove it. Fortunately we didn't have to do that! Phew!
The evening was relatively uneventful, other than a few calls over channel 16, from the Coast Guard looking for a father and son in a 20ft SeaRay runabout that had gone missing. One can only speculate as to what that was all about!
We did pick up a lot of junk on the radar and had to alter course once in case we hit something, but we didn't. We did discover that our spotlight is next to useless. Fortunately Warren had purchased a 8,500 lumins flashlight before we left New Orleans. We have one of these in NZ and debated bringing it with us, but the weight of it is not easily included when we are only allowed ONE bag each on the plane!
Waz went off for his first nap just after dark, around 9pm, and had an hour and a half sleep.
At around midnight, Waz went for a second nap on the sofa in the salon for about an hour. Unfortunately the radio chatter was what woke him up, I think. It hadn't quieted down yet.
With four other boats on our stern some 8-10 miles back...they had come from Carrabelle just after we turned into the East Pass, so they were a little behind us....we felt secure that if anything untoward happened, we would all muck in.
There was some odd stuff going on with one boat out to our port side in the early hours of the morning. We first noticed his AIS showing him charging in our general direction. Then he stopped and his AIS disappeared. We reported the sighting to the rest of the group on channel 72, our designated channel for the crossing, and all were aware of the craft.
Pazza Bella, a boat that had gone ahead of all of us and earlier in the day had this boat come up behind him...he could see it on Radar and AIS. The problem being that the AIS did not identify the boat with a name, just a MMSI number. He called them on the radio and asked what they were doing. They identified themselves as Coast Guard on a 'mission', which sounds odd to all of us, because it would be most unusual for CG to NOT identify themselves and secondly that they would tell a complete stranger they were on a mission. We can only wonder or call up coast guard and ask them if one of their boats has that MMSI number!
Others in the group reported lots of yachts going in the same direction...we didn't see any on our radar though.
I was pretty wired until the early hours and finally gave in to the urge to sleep around 2am. I washed, did my teeth and usual bedtime routine and hopped into bed. The noise of the engines was fairly high, being that they are in the room next door! Still, with a painkiller taken for my left hip, I went out like a light for about 2 hours. I woke suddenly and decided to get up and see if Waz wanted another break..loo etc.
Even though we had the aAutopilot on, we didn't feel that we could leave the helm for any length of time, and we shouldn't either. There are dials, radar and course to keep an eye on.
He took a break for a bit and then I went back downstairs for another couple of hours sleep around 4.30am, sleeping until 7am. I noticed that the light was grey, where the night had been pitch black.
Lovely lot of stars out and the wind was light with warmer air. We had the fly bridge door open most of the night and even had the pilot house window open for some air. Waz occasionally hung out the pilot house door when checking out strange lights to port.
The best place to see everything was from the Fly bridge, of course.
The night went surprisingly quickly and dawn came with grey skies, and much atmospheric pollution along the coastline. Dolphin were playing along in our wake even in the dark. Waz opened the pilot house door and discovered a dolphin having a surf just below him.
The morning brought crab pots in our way!!!! We asked Dave and Robyn if we could tuck in behind them as we were in the path of a Fish Sanctuary, and needed to move to starb'd. Blue Moon has Rope cutters on her props, so we felt more comfy watching them dodge the pots so that we could anticipate them. We found it easier as the choppy early morning waters quieted, the later it got.
We needed to wait until around 9am to start out journey down the ICW from the tip of Anclogte Key where the R4 marker is. We did a little jig when we passed the marker. It is a good feeling to know we had been on course all night:)
Sunrise was a pretty oily sky as you can see. 
This char shows us in the middle on course for R4 marker. That is the official end to the crossing.
On the horizon was this power plant. 
Here we are turning around R4, and into the ICW channel that took us to the Tarpon Springs channel up the Anclote River. 
9.57 and we are dead on target going up the channel to Anclote River and on our way along the very skinny channel to Tarpon Springs and Turtle Cover Marina, where we were docking for the next night (Monday).
These little Islands are 'spoil grounds' or mangrove islands, and lined the channel up to TS (Tarpon Springs)
Of course I take photos all the way up the channel, it being very different to where we have come from in the Panhandle.
The first marina we passed by.
EAGLE!!!
Can you see how skinny the channel is? The marina was busy as all get out with so many boats coming in from the crossing, and we were asked to let this blue bottomed boat go ahead of us because we were the largest boat and needed a berth by the Tiki Bar. They were run off their feet when we arrived! You also have other boats coming towards you, down this channel. Some are not very considerate, either in their speed or getting over towards the markers.
Here is the channel up the river.
We came so close to these shrimp boats that one of the crew asked me (I was down putting ropes and fenders in place on the cockpit deck) if I wanted to swap our boat for his!!!:) They asked where we were from, and he was impressed that we had come such a long way...from NEW ZEALAND???? lol. I told him I wanted a dinghy at that very moment...they all laughed and said they would take over for us! I could almost have reached out and touched their boat, so close were we getting around the tight corner to the right, on this photo.
I took this photo from the pilot house just before going down to help tie up. The Tiki Bar is just there on the left...where the sign is.
All the loopers from the overnight agreed to meet for dinner at 6.30pm and we went our sep. ways. It is now noon on Monday 2nd December.
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