We stayed at The Moorings overnight. Before we had arrived there, Wayne, on Help Me Rhonda, had been talking to the local expert "Buddy". He said that we should leave that afternoon. I could not do that, I had been up all day and staying up another 20 hours or so would not be possible. I had my doubts about Buddy's creditability, because his suggestions did not quite go along with Tom (the weather guy) that posts a daily column on the AGLCA website. Tom suggested leaving later in the afternoon and going direct to Tarpon Springs at a slow speed arriving at 10 in the morning when the sun was not in your eyes. Tarpon Springs is well known for the numerous crab pots and their floats. If you snag one of the floats in your prop, you immediately wrap up the rope pulling the crab pot off of the bottom and into the bottom of your boat. Then you cannot run that engine until you free yourself from the rope and hopefully have not done any damage to the propeller or the strut that supports the propeller shaft. Not a pretty sight to be in the Gulf and not be able to use an engine or both engines if you were really unlucky.
We finally agreed to leave the next morning at around 11:00 AM and head toward Tarpon Springs, but not go directly there, The plan was to head east and follow the curve of the mainland south while staying far enough offshore to stay in deeper water and away from the crab pots. Buddy told us that the crab pot problem was overrated, He said that for every boat that hit a crab pot there were thousands that did not, and therefore they were really no problem at all! Remind me to give you my theory on this later. The problem with this, is that leaving so early we would get to Tarpon Springs about sunrise, not a good plan in my mind, but what the heck, the crabpots are not a problem, right??
Next came the selection of who would lead. Blewgrass had 4 crew, but no autopilot, and I gather, not a lot of experience. But, they did have AIS! Help me Rhonda had more experience, no AIS, and an autopilot that could not follow a plotted course, but sometimes would follow a heading if everything was perfect. That left us, with 3 crew, experience questionable (especially in Gulf crossings), good autopilot, AIS, and not smart enough to say no!
We led the pack out of the Marina at around 11:00 AM and I set the autopilot for the first waypoint. We had all agreed on the waypoints and had all entered the same ones, so that we would all be on the same page when we decided to do any changes. That's when the plan changed for the first time of many. We were getting 2 ft seas from the starboard beam. While not bad it was uncomfortable. The boat was rolling a bit, and we all agreed that if we changed course to a more southerly waypoint it would be a lot better. The down side, if any, would be that we would now arrive at Tarpon Springs even earlier. Now it wouldn't even be light enough to see those pesky crabpots. But, change we did!!
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| Sunshades keep the sun off the display |
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| A little rough when we started |
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| Crew resting in the sun |
Cindy's Observations: Pat was able to catch some winks that afternoon. Around 4 o'clock I tried to sleep in the chair but opted to go on the bed below . Just at dusk I was brought to my feet by a hellatious sound. My fears were we had caught a crab pot and had some damage. I ran topside to get the report. There were crab pots beside us but Larry cut the engine and threw it in reverse to avoid a snag. That is what the noise was that scared the wits out of me. He assured me there was no problem of any kind.
The sky was bright and sunny when I went below, now it had transformed to an eerie dense air and unsettling layer of fog hovering below the clouds. Even though the water was as calm as it could be, I had an uneasy feeling something was going to happen. The sunset was pretty. We even had a pod of dolphin doing acrobatics in the distance. But I still felt uneasy.
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| Calm Seas |
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| Calmer seas |
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| Sunset |
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| What I saw as the night went on |
Cindy's Observations: As it got darker, the lights on the boats behind us began to take on the shape of Christmas trees. I used this analogy to try and settle my nerves. Even the instrument panel looked of Christmas. We all wished the smooth as glass water would last through the night. At this point Pat issued the life jackets. I chose the older vest type for two reasons: warmth and padding. Larry and Pat followed suit. If we were going to run into rough water the padding would be appreciated.
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| Water like glass!! |
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| Help me Rhonda and Blewgrass at night |
The sky was cloudy so there was no moon or stars. As we continued on, you could not see the water or the horizon. The boat steadily increased it's rocking until at one point around 2:00 am, both Cindy and Pat were knocked off of their chairs by a wave. Pat's completely came out from under her and folded up, leaving her sprawled on the floor on top of the collapsed chair. She got a pretty bad bruise from it too. Cindy ended up on the floor next to my chair and just stayed there. It was safer to not move. We had all agreed when we left, that we would all wear life jackets all night no matter what the conditions, so we just settled in where we were.
Cindy's Observations: Around 10:30 Larry and Pat had a snack. My stomach felt a little queasy because I hadn't eaten enough earlier that day. I ate a little thinking it would settle my stomach. As the waves increased the breeze did too. Since we did not have any moonlight it was difficult to judge time. Around 2 am Pat and I simultaneously were bounced out of our seats onto the floor. As Larry says, it was the safest place to be.
The wind had picked up again and now was hitting us from the port side. We were heading south by now, so to get away from the pounding we were taking on the beam (side), we either had to turn east towards shore and head into the waves, or turn more southwest away from shore and take the waves on the port quarter. By this time we had switched places and Help Me Rhonda was in the lead with us following directly behind them and Blewgrass following us. Wayne looked at his charts, I couldn't catch mine, they were all over the boat because of the big wave, and I couldn't focus on the chartplotter because it was bouncing so bad. We decided that if we went toward shore, we could stray into some shallow water and more crab pots. So we turned more out to deeper water away from shore.
About this time we lost Blewgrass!! Not really lost, but left behind a little. Being a single engine trawler, she was taking a little worse beating that us. When we decided to turn more out to the Gulf, she slowed way down. Our boat will idle around 6 mph which was faster than Blewgrass wanted to go. We kept them in sight for quite a while, but lost sight of them close to daylight. We kept in contact by radio and I relayed heading and waypoint information to them as we went.
Cindy's Observations: We felt bad pulling away from Blewgrass but we couldn't go any slower. Our focus at that point was to watch for crab pots. There were a lot out there. Several strings running in different directions. I was in the front window with the glass up, Larry's at the wheel watching and Pat was watching out the sides. As the sun started to lighten the sky the waves seamed to be letting up slightly.
We continued on until daylight, which was around 6:30 in the morning. The higher the sun got, the better you could see the crab pots, which had been with us pretty much all night I'm sure. So as wrong as Buddy was on the weather, he seemed to have been right about the crab pots. We weaved our way through them as they came into view. If you were watching those that were near the bow of the boat as we went buy, you could see that the same bow wake that propelled the porpoise along under the boat, was pushing the floats out of the way!! I still paid attention to them, but was not nearly as concerned as before.
Cindy's Observations: Like the colors of jockey's silks on horses the crab trap floats have colors and bands to designate the fisherman's traps. Some had 1/2 color 1/2 white or a color band. The gray floats where very difficult to spot. We thought it would be wonderful if the floats had reflective qualities to spot them easily.
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| Float on a crabpot!! |
As we got west of Tarpon Springs, we turned east and headed into the channel leading into port. If there had not been the cloud cover, we would have been looking directly into the sun, However, the rest of the trip was pretty easy. The water was calmer and the crab pots were visible and everyone was wide awake again. I relayed the Lat Long of the turn to Blewgrass so she could mark the spot on her plotter and know where to follow.
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| Following Rhonda east into Tarpon Springs 0700 |
We had two plans as to what we were going to do once we got into protected waters again. One was to find a quiet place to anchor and sleep for a couple of hours and then get to our slip at the Tarpon Springs City dock. The other was to just continue on to the City dock and be done with it. We decided to keep going and got to the city marina around 9:30. We had put around 23 hours on the engines since we left Carabelle, and no sleep at least for me! Later when I filled the tanks, I found that we had burned around 90 gallons of fuel and travelled around 181 statute miles. Pretty close to 2 MPG!! Pretty good for our size of boat. We averaged just a little over 7.8 Mph. Pretty slow, but efficient.
And guess who greeted us at the dock and helped us tie up?? Gemini Dream!! She had taken the more puppy friendly long way around the bend. Having originally left Apalachicola for Cedar Key, they found the water too shallow and continued on to Crystal River and followed the coast for 2-3 days anchoring along the way and got to Tarpon Springs the day before us. So we had another happy reunion.
Cindy's Observations: After Larry hailed the marina for our slip assignment, a familiar voice came back to give us instructions how to enter the channel. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Gemini Dream on the radio. We tied up next to them and gave them a big "we survived our cross" hug. After our hellos Larry went down for a nap. Pat and I had a bite for breakfast. Pat went to bed soon after. I was too keyed up and wide awake to sleep. I went shopping on the sponge docks.
Tarpon Springs is a Greek city with Sponge diving boats, Greek food, and Sea food galore.
Cindy's Observations: Tarpon Springs was once called the "Venice of the South." It is known as the "Sponge Capital of the world." It received its name for the giant Tarpon that jumped and splashed in the bayou in 1876. The spring water here was considered to have healing powers It is now a prime spot to watch manatees. The Greek divers came to Tarpon Springs and discovered the wealth of sponges. Soon the community grew to what it is today, a thriving Greek culture within the community.
After a good nights sleep, we felt a lot better.
Cindy's Observations: It is only a guess as to which is the best way to cross the gulf. You can only hope for the best conditions. Given the opportunity to cross again, we would choose a shorter daytime cross with FLAT water.
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