Days 102 – 103
On Tuesday morning, 12/22/20, I did want to attend our pre-crossing meeting up at the marina, so Steve pulled the boat back in closer to the dock finger and the tide was also up, which made it possible for me to – very slowly and gingerly – climb off of the boat with Steve’s assistance, though I was quite nervous doing so. Shelley, Scott, and Buddy were already waiting for us up at the marina, and we were followed closely by Walt and Ladonna. We all pulled up chairs and Walt basically led the meeting, being the only gulf crossing veteran. Since Mona Gee was equipped with neither radar nor AIS, and Legacy produced the largest wake, it was decided that Antares Star would lead, followed by Mona Gee, followed by Legacy. Walt and Ladonna provided us with very good information and advice about the crossing itself, which helped to ease my fears. By the time our “captain’s meeting” ended, Scott and Shelley were still on the fence as to whether they’d make the trip or not, seeing as slightly rougher seas were predicted for the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and on into daylight. Being the smallest and lightest vessel (and sans stabilizers), Mona Gee would most certainly suffer the roughness the most of our trio. I had the feeling that Shelley, fearing seasickness, wanted to delay their crossing, but Scott obviously prevailed when we saw them untying and pulling in lines to join us at noon. Antares Star passed in front of us as I untied and pulled-in Legacy’s lines and Steve guided her out of the slip from the helm. Antares Star continued on down the Carrabelle River as Legacy held back for Mona Gee to finish untying and slip in front of us.
The morning’s weather was clear and sunny, with only slight breezes. The water was not perfectly smooth as glass, but about as close to it as possible. The group consensus had agreed to keep a crossing speed of 7 knots, since that was basically top-speed for Mona Gee. We knew that would make for a slow crossing, but the whole idea of buddy boats is to stick together. All for one and one for all. (Besides, why not save a little money on fuel?) As we progressed and the afternoon stretched to 3:00 pm, the winds dropped and waters smoothed to glass, which is optimum gulf-crossing conditions. 😊 We watched dolphins all around us and were even visited by several sea turtles, which were easily seen in the clear, still waters. As we left Verizon cellular coverage, Pandora’s playlist waned on our blue-tooth-capable stereo, which meant Steve’s iPhone switched over to playing from his offline cache of stored favorites, one of which was Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, along with many, many others. Ironically, the wreck song played THREE separate times during our gulf-crossing, which was unnerving, at best!
As we cruised onward and completely lost sight of any land, I focused on all the water fowl that flew and bobbed along beside our boat. Seagulls, pelicans, and cormorants would float right in front of us until what seemed like the last minute before they flew out of Legacy’s path. At one point, instead of taking flight, a very large cormorant started paddling really fast to move out of Legacy’s way, then bobbed along beside of us, as we passed, squawking at the top of its voice – obviously berating us for forcing it to swim so hard and so fast! 😊 Why it didn’t just fly out of the way, like the other water fowl, was a mystery, unless it’s abnormally large girth might’ve deterred that…(?) About 4:30 pm, Legacy was suddenly joined by what we counted to be a total of 26 dolphins all surfing along on both sides of us in our bow and stern wakes! I hurried to the bow of the boat to watch these beauties up close, while Steve let the autopilot drive so he could join me up on the bow. Our entourage accompanied us for almost 15 straight minutes! I kept telling myself I should get a video of this glorious spectacle, but of course didn’t have my phone with me, and didn’t want to miss anything while I went to retrieve it, so no video was made. As the afternoon transitioned over to evening and approached sunset, I took great comfort in seeing our two buddy boats cruising about a half-mile away from us. Antares Star and Mona Gee cruised up ahead of us to our starboard. We had previously agreed not to do an hourly check-in with each other on the radio, as that could become tedious, but we still communicated enough to provide moral support.
Steve and I had been helming from the flybridge this whole time, but as the sky darkened and the air got chillier, we moved downstairs to helm from inside the salon. We watched the sun completely set over nothing but miles and miles of ocean through the salon windows, which was an awe-inspiring sight. Even though the seas were calm and I’d been pretty much EATING Dramamine tablets, my stomach still felt queasy because of the ocean swells and my anxiety. As it got dark outside, we watched our buddy boats transform from visible, floating vessels up ahead of us into small lights on the horizon. As we traveled, we’d noticed Antares Star making some unusual navigational moves on the radar, until Walt finally got on the radio to tell us they were going to drop back because they were experiencing problems with their autopilot. Since Mona Gee had no radar, that meant Legacy had to take the lead, putting Mona Gee between us and Antares Star. We have a joke that – no matter the activity – somehow Steve always ends up becoming the leader by default, a position he’d just as soon not have. And now again – on our very first gulf-crossing (at NIGHT, no less), here we were – LEADING. Fortunately, all of our navigational tools were working well, so we stayed on course. This all happened right at 9:00 pm and also when we were exactly halfway to our allotted 20-mile offshore way-point, which is where the crab-pots start popping up everywhere in our paths, for the rest of the way into shore. (Our crossing was purposely timed so that we wouldn’t reach this way-point until on up into Wednesday morning, in order to see the crab-pots without being blinded by the early morning sun’s reflection on the water.)
We enjoyed a partially full moon accompanying us that night until 1:37 am, when it promptly set, leaving us in absolute, total darkness. At this point, Mona Gee and Antares Star were running far off of our port side stern. Antares Star was farther away from us than Mona Gee, but from the angle of our view, they appeared to be running right on top of each other. Again, it was very comforting to see their lights against the darkness, as well their boats’ images on our radar screen!
Since we were far away from any man-made lighting (excluding the navigational lights of our three boats), I stepped outside the salon to observe the amazing stellar night skies spread above us from one horizon to the other. The Milky Way, as well as several constellations, appeared so vividly, it took my breath away. We humans rarely have an opportunity such as this one to observe the universe above us with absolutely no interference. The awe-inspiring moments just kept on coming!
Even though neither one of us ever went to sleep, Steve showed me what to watch for at the helm on the gauges and radar while I was “on my watch”, so we could take turns at the helm. At one point, I noticed a distinct image on our radar that appeared in addition to our two buddy boats(?!) The image stayed steady and moved swiftly across the radar from southeast to northwest, even though we saw NO lights outside our windows anywhere! Steve started to pick up the radio and signal Antares Star to see if they’d had the same sight on their radar, then changed his mind, in case the mystery image turned out to be a drug-smuggling boat or plane who might over-hear us talking about them on the radio!
At about 2:30 am, the wind decided to kick up. It increased from 8 knots to 16 knots, which turned our ride rough. I felt simultaneously grateful for my Dramamine and sorry for Shelley Johnson over on Mona Gee, who wouldn’t take Dramamine because she feared it would put her to sleep, which one does not want to be on an overnight crossing. About this same time, Legacy began slowing down in order to delay our arrival at the 20-mile point. (Again, we didn’t wish to arrive early enough to have the sun directly in our eyes and blinding us to the crab pots.) Soon, we noticed that Antares Star had begun slowing as well. We both announced those plans earlier on the radio, but did not receive a response back from Mona Gee, so they must not have heard us. So, for the rest of that dark and very early morning, Mona Gee continued on at a full 7 knots and so stayed in the lead, moving farther and farther ahead of us. As the wind kept increasing, and the waves also grew to more than 2-feet in height at short intervals, Legacy’s hull began to occasionally rise up out of the water and fall back to the water’s surface with a loud, slapping sound, that convinced me our boat was running right over the shells of innocent sea turtles! Steve assured me that we weren’t hitting sea turtles, we were most likely hitting dolphins! I knew that was probably BS, but was relieved when he finally conceded our boat was just slapping down hard onto the water. After several hours of rough riding, daybreak on Wednesday, 12/23/20, revealed we were cruising in “confused seas” under 14-knot winds. Also, just as the sun rose, we could see a bright star above us, hovering low in the southern horizon. Ladonna came onto the radio to tell us that star was the one for which their boat was named – Antares Star, which is the 15th largest star in our solar system, the heart of the constellation Scorpius, and for thousands of years has been known as a chief navigational star. Surely at some point in our educations, Steve and I had learned about Antares, but we appreciated the refresher lesson.
At 8:00 am, we had not quite reached our 20-mile way-point, when Steve suddenly spotted our first crab-pot, which meant it was time for “all-hands-on-deck” to watch for the dastardly things, as they began to increase exponentially all around us. Steve got onto the radio to alert our buddy boats that the crab-pots had begun early, so they would be sure to keep their eyes peeled. We had moved back up into the flybridge at daybreak, where we would spend the next several hours straining our eyes to spot our elusive nemeses. As we cruised, we noticed the crab-pots seemed to have been placed in lines across the water, often right in the very path our autopilot had been programmed to cruise. As I’ve stated before, some of the pots were painted day-glo orange or green, while the most visible ones were white. But overall, the vast majority of crab-pots seem to be painted a dark color that blends right into the water’s surface color. Steve prefers to let the autopilot helm, but with so many crab-pots, he was forced to set Legacy’s steering to manual and spent hours man-handling the wheel from port to starboard and back to port again to avoid hitting a pot.
Finally, around 9:00 am, Steve shouted “Land Ho!” as he spotted the shoreline far in the distance ahead of us. We could finally see the Clearwater, St. Petersburg, and Tampa skylines on the horizon! As we all neared land, Antares Star moved up to second place in our little convoy, and Legacy was last again. As we entered into Clearwater Harbor around noon on this gorgeous day, I ran all around on Legacy’s deck snapping picture after picture of the lovely harbor and its beautiful buildings. We followed Mona Gee and Antares Star inward, until Mona Gee turned off toward some anchorages in the harbor where they planned to drop anchor, draw the curtains and go to sleep after a LONG night.
We followed Antares Star toward Clearwater Beach Municipal Marina, where we’d each booked transient slips for the next several days. To our disappointment, the harbor master directed Antares Star in one direction but directed Legacy around to a T-dock in another part of the marina. (We had hoped to be slipped closer to them.) This tie-up was to a high, fixed dock that was far less precarious than our last slip in Carrabelle. We hung fenders and tied lines securely so we could finally crawl into bed for some well-deserved sleep, although we doubted we’d get much of that before dark, as this marina was an active and very noisy one.
Steve went up to the marina office to get checked-in while I changed into my pajamas and fell into bed. Despite all the noise, I’d slept about two hours, when Steve came down to wake me up, saying the marina had asked us to relocate our boat to make room for a larger, incoming vessel with elderly occupants aboard who needed our secure tie-up for easy on and off accessibility. I changed back into my clothes and untied all the lines I’d just tied, while Steve started the engines. When we arrived at our new slip, we were pleased to be placed right beside Antares Star, which is where we’d originally hoped to be. This slip had a tinier, fixed pier for boarding and de-boarding than our earlier T-dock, which made me nervous, but Steve adjusted the lines so that we could temporarily pull the stern up close to the pier when necessary. By the time we got all settled and secured in our new slip, we were both too wired to sleep, so we walked over to Crabby’s in the Clearwater Beach complex for an early dinner, before we came back to the boat and crashed.
Position: N 27° 58.582, W 82° 49.453
Distance traveled: 172 SM
Total distance traveled: 2069 SM
Total marina nights: 86
Total nights at anchor: 16
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 27