Our Gulf Crossing - Some Good News and Some Not so Good News

Dog Island FL to Clearwater FL
Loop Miles to date: 1202; Days on Loop: 52

The really good news is that we are safe and sound in Clearwater, staying at the Clearwater Harbor Marina. We arrived here on Monday around noon after about 19 hours in the Gulf of Mexico. We had planned on 18 hours, so that part was about right. It was really a tale of 4 different journeys...

First, as we departed Dog Island off the coast of Carabelle FL, it was a gorgeous afternoon...we were right on time with our 3 pm departure with our buddy boats InSpeyered 2 and Liquid Assets. We were the lead boat of our small flotilla, and we spaced ourselves out at 1/4 to 1/2 mile intervals so that we all had a little breathing room. For the first 3 hours or so, we had rolling seas off of our bow...some 2 - 3 foot rollers, which were not uncomfortable, but weren't quite the flat seas we had hoped for.

 

Here is our chartplotter showing our intended course...and you can see our position at the beginning of this journey. Still daylight and all is going pretty well.

Part 2: Then around dusk, the water flattened out and it turned into a wonderful night for travelling. It got dark...really dark, as the moon was not expected to rise until after 9pm. But with our radar, auto pilots, and AIS capabilities, we were on cruise control anyway. It was delightful...the stars were indescribably beautiful. More than you can imagine - clear as a bell and breathtaking. And then the moon rose and with it we could see once again, as the moon and it's reflection were like a little spotlight in the sky for us...but the comfort factor was about to change...

You can see that the colors on the plotter have changed for night viewing, and we are about 1/3 of the way there...nice and comfortable still. We are still making really good time at this point.

 

 

InSpeyred 2 on the left, and Liquid Assets back on the right...nice calm seas.

InSpeyered 2 at Sunset...only waves here are our wake.

Beautiful Sunset on the Gulf...really flat seas...for now.

Part 3: The wind had started to pick up out of the east, and at the same time we started to get some 2 foot seas hitting us on the bow. This was at about midnight or so, and it was ok, but not really as enjoyable as it had been. By 3 am, it was getting rougher and much more uncomfortable. We had to decrease our speed to increase our comfort level, but it was not much fun. We had 3 - 4 foot seas hitting us on both the beam and coming at us on the bow. Imagine being in a huge washing machine...that was us. We were often seeing some 5 and maybe 6 footers as well. We were never in any danger at all, but it was quite uncomfortable. At about 5 am, we collectively made the decision to head to Tarpon Springs instead of Clearwater, which effectively added an hour to our trip overall, but would get us off of the Gulf an hour sooner. This line of travel also increased our comfort marginally, so it was a good decision all around. Bottom line - we had miserable conditions for a solid 5 to 6 hours, but we all survived just fine.

Part 4: We finally got out of the rough conditions at about 8 am as we approached the cover of the Florida coast. We actually reached the Intercoastal Waterway at about 9:30 am, but then had a bit over 2 hours of travel to get down to Clearwater. This part was easy driving, but by this point we were all exhausted, and it seemed to take an awfully long time for this short part of the trip to be over.

Lessons learned:

• Dogs are amazing...our 2 weren't entirely happy, but they made this journey with us without complaint and without any accidents...really impressive.
• Our small little tug is a sturdy beast. We knew going in that it was, and we never had a doubt about our safety. The boat could have handled much rougher and nastier conditions...much more than the 2 of us would like to try to handle!
• Weather forecasters are guessing more than they will admit for this part of the Gulf. We had multiple sources of weather information...national services, local experts, weather gurus, actual buoy data from a buoy in the middle of the gulf, etc. And ALL were pointing to a nice smooth crossing. They were right for about 30% of our journey...the rest of it they missed big time.

Although we didn't enjoy the total journey, we still feel a great sense of accomplishment. We managed our way through some difficult sea conditions and battled our way to the other side. We are both very happy that this part of our adventure is behind us...and now we get to enjoy the sunny beaches of the west coast of Florida...nice!