3rd Time is a Charm

On the ICW passing St Pete Beach, we see the
historic Don Cesar Hotel

Our third time to cross the Big Bend part of the GOM was a piece of cake, especially compared to the first time we crossed in 2013.

A beautiful sunrise, somewhere over the northern
Gulf of Mexico

We left St Pete Municipal Marina Friday morning, a calm, sunny (and hot) day.  We passed north of the Sunshine Skyway, near Pinellas Point, and the area where Sue spent her teenage years.  Brought back a lot of memories.  We stayed on the ICW inside rather than cruising just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, even though we had a lot of no-wake zones, and several bridges to have raised.  We figured that we’d have enough open water cruising the following day.  We found the ICW channel north of Clearwater to be only 9’ deep at low tide, and at times, only 100’ wide!

We anchored for the night near Anclote Key, off Tarpon Springs, in a rather exposed anchorage.  The winds stayed N 10-15 all night, so the boat swung at anchor quite a bit & the waves were noisy slapping against the hull.  But we needed a quick easy departure route the next morning.

Talk about getting out of bed at zero-dark-thirty!!  I haven’t done that since my college days!  We turned on our spotlight in order to have enough light on the bow to raise & wash the anchor & chain.  As we got underway at 0400, we kept the spotlight on to help avoid any crab pots in our path.  Instead, we saw numerous seagulls just ahead, using our light to catch their early breakfast.  Using our radar & chartplotter, we inched our way into deeper open water.  That day, we used the radar extensively, first to locate the channel markers and other boats out early, and later in the day to keep track of the rain storms in the Gulf.

This was all we saw for about 15 hours of our 16 hour trip.
Note how calm the waters are!  Just what the Admiral
ordered!

As we headed across 150 miles of open water, the 1-2’ seas on our starboard quarter made for a moderately uncomfortable ride.  We were still able to engage “Otto the Pilot” (our autopilot), but we were hoping that the seas would lie down to what the weather forecast said.  After 5 hours, the wind finally got a hold of the forecast, and laid down to almost nothing.  The last half of the trip, we had basically flat calm seas – just what the Admiral wanted to see.

It was mostly an uneventful trip, exactly the kind we like to have.  We saw many dolphins along the way, usually coming to the boat to jump in our wake.  A special treat was sighting a huge sea turtle, maybe 5-6’ long & several hundred pounds.  We saw it about 150’ from the boat shortly before it dived under water, but we think it was a loggerhead turtle.  Then, as we approached 20 miles from our destination, we started seeing monarch butterflies all around the boat.  We heard later that the Apalachicola-Carrabelle area is on the migration route for the monarchs.

A bald eagle looking for lunch, right next to our dock
in Apalach.

We finally entered East Pass just before sunset (right as planned), then found an anchorage behind Dog Island and dropped the hook in twilight.  It was a long 16 hours under way, but we both felt that a day crossing is much mo’ betta than the two previous night crossings.  A nice touch the following morning after a good night’s sleep, was having our coffee on the back deck, enjoying the much cooler morning breeze, and watching the brown pelicans diving for breakfast into a school of fish not more than 100’ away from our boat.  They were so close that we could hear their splash, and so numerous that sometimes 3 of them hit the water simultaneously – synchronized pelican diving!!

We’re now back in Apalach, where we spent a couple days earlier this year.  The Admiral had to eat more ersters & find her craft beer brewery.  She already had esters for dinner last night, and again this morning.  We’ll suffer through this another couple days before departing for points west.  A nice cold front is coming through this week, and we want to anchor a couple nights in the cool weather.  In less than a week, we’ll put our boat to bed for a long winter’s nap.

Walking in Apalachicola, we see many monarch butterflies

"I'll get you yet, my little pretty!"