11/17/18 Saturday: We spent the morning preparing for our upcoming adventure. We looked again at the weather forecast, and it actually looked like tomorrow night would be a bit better – a little bit calmer wind and sea. Now what?! It sounded like everybody else in the marina was planning to go tonight. We want to go with other boats. Not that there is really anything anybody else can really do if there is a problem – other than pick us up out of the water if there’s a fire or something. But for a journey across 180 miles of big water in the dark, we want to go with other boats! So – we decided to stick with the original plan of tonight. After all, tonight looked good, and things could change and tomorrow may not end up being good. Every weather source we checked looked like tonight would be winds under 15mph and waves under 2 feet.
This is our journey track…. A lot of big open water!
As I mentioned before, there will be crabpots in the water at the Clearwater end of the journey. When the sun is coming up directly in front of you, you want to be able to see the little buoys in the water. So the goal is to arrive no earlier than 10:00am, which gives the sun a chance to get a little higher in the sky by the time you get into the crab trap area. So at 9 mph, and 177 miles total, we calculated a departure time from the Carrabelle marina at 3:00. It would be 20 hours from dock to dock.
Here was one compilation of forecasts that showed the difference between tonight (in red) and tomorrow (in green). Yes – tomorrow looks a little better.
We got all the preparations done. Kenny made sure Stuart the dinghy was secure and could be deployed and used if necessary. He checked with engineering, and everything looked good down there: oil levels, fuel filters, etc. Laverne & Shirley said they were ready. I took everything off of the counters and either put it all into cupboards or on the floor. We got out extra life jackets. We got out all of the emergency equipment- flares, etc. We put all the fenders in their holders so that the gunwales were clear walkways.
We heard the first group of 9 mph boats leave the marina about an hour before us. We cast off our lines and were leaving right at 3:00. There was just a light breeze – YAY!
We got to the “R2” buoy right at 4:00. That is the marker where everyone begins the buoy to buoy journey. You set your heading to a marker buoy on the other side – whether it be at Tarpon Springs or Clearwater – and stay on that heading! Our destination was the channel marker at the Clearwater Pass. Island Girl was in the lead, followed by Parrot Bay, then Bay Tripper. It’s good to have a boat with AIS in the lead, to watch for other traffic. The other two boats were fine with us setting the pace. Captain set AweToe-the-auto-pilot to follow a track to the set waypoint, and away we went. The water wasn’t bad, just some small waves coming from more of an easterly direction than we anticipated, so they were hitting us in the side, but this was pretty good water.
It wasn’t long before the sun set, around 5:45. The moon was just over half full, so it provided some light. The waves got bigger, and the flag on our bow was blowing straight across from left to right. It was getting rough.
The Garmin chartplotter upstairs is our primary navigation. It has the AIS signals on it, the route charted, it is tied to AweToe, and also shows the radar. These are all things that we need to see while traveling in the dark. The Garmin sends a signal through the on-board network to Gladys the iPad, so we can bring up a Garmin Helm app on Gladys. It shows exactly what is showing on the upstairs unit, and Captain can use the touch screen on Gladys for many of the functions on the actual one upstairs. We’ve done this a lot in the last couple of weeks while it has been so cold, windy and rainy. But tonight at one point, the network lost its signal, so we had no screen downstairs on Gladys. Captain had to go up on the flybridge and reboot and restart something to make it all work again. Fortunately, the AweToe Pilot continued on the correct heading and track while he did that, and he was careful in making it upstairs and back down safely in the dark and rough water.
I had not put one of my office baskets with pens, notebooks, and a bunch of other stuff on the floor. It went flying across the dash and down the stairs. It was too dark and rough to try to go clean it up. We’d just have to be careful whenever we went downstairs to the head. The closet doors in the forward berth were slamming open and closed, so Kenny went down with some big wide blue tape and taped them closed. Two floor level drawers in the salon kept opening and slamming so we tried to cushion them shut by jamming a pillow along the floor. One cupboard in the galley that contained glasses wasn’t blocked, and it flew open far enough to throw three shot glasses and two metal beer glasses out. One shot glass broke. All the cans and bottles in the fridge were rolling and clanking. I stuffed towels in a few cupboards to keep things from clanking together. Thankfully nothing else broke, spilled, or exploded.
We were traveling along with Parrot Bay behind us, and Bay Tripper behind them. It was reassuring to look back and see them tracking along with us. This was the best picture that I could get of them. And it was the last picture for the next 13 hours of darkness.
We could also see the other fleet of boats off to our port side about a mile away cruising along with us. Then AweToe quit! YIKES! Kenny had to drive for a little while which is exhausting in this kind of seas. He thinks that it just was getting overworked for a little while, because in rough water it is constantly correcting to stay on track. (I think it actually got seasick and had to take a time out to barf overboard.). At that point, Capt was pretty sure he didn’t want me driving. He finally got it to restart, and it worked great for the rest of the trip. Wayne took the helm a few times to give Kenny a break. I was worthless for any kind of helm relief. Anytime I sat up, I got this empty feeling like life was draining out of me, so I just had to lay down again. I didn’t get nauseous or sick, which was good. I didn’t sleep much, but I laid down on the couch in the salon for just about the whole trip. Sorry Captain! Thank you for being here, Wayne!
11/18/18 Sunday: ********************
I occasionally looked at the clock and wished the hours would tick by quicker – and I cheered at 1:00am. At that point, we were 10 hours into the trip and halfway there! The moon set at about 2:30, and then it was really dark. It wasn’t pitch black – we could still see a horizon line between the water and the sky. But that was all. And we could see the navigation lights of other boats. No more moon glimmer on the wave caps – just rollers that we couldn’t see, constantly hitting us in the side, slamming and rocking us. As long as the engines kept moving along, I knew we’d be okay – just extremely uncomfortable. I prayed that God would calm the waters. I know He can. And He always answers prayers. But down in my soul, I felt His answer was “not this time, but I’ll get you safely across”. OK- I’ll take that. He must be teaching me something here.
It was really rough. Honestly – it sucked. In my book, it’s really hard for something to rate ‘terrible’ – but this was terrible, and I do not want to do it again – EVER! I am not a fisherman or a sailor that does rough water. I’m a fair weather pleasure cruiser. I don’t think that I’ve ever been seasick to the point of barfing, but I do get uneasy, anxious, and feel better if I lay down and don’t see what’s going on. Some people can’t do that. I don’t want to see. I get anxious and feel hollow inside. I was hollow for a long time.
Finally, around 7:00am, the sun rose on the eastern horizon, promising a new day. The water was still rough, and we were still rolling back and forth from side to side. I’d look out the side window across the salon from my couch, and all I could see was water, and five seconds later, all I could see was sky… over and over and over again.
Kenny went upstairs to get his eyes peeled for crab pot buoys. By about 9:00 we could see land, and our AweToe took us right to the waypoint on track. The waters calmed, since it was an easterly wind and the shore was blocking and reducing the fetch now as we neared the wonderful land mass to our east. Oh how lovely it would have been if the whole Gulf could just have been this way. People say that there are beautiful stars out there when the moon sets. But we wouldn’t know. We had to stay inside the whole trip to be safe. And I SO wanted to see the Milky Way!
We cruised into Clearwater Beach Municipal Marina right on time, and arrived at 11:00 as planned: 20 hours dock to dock. We chose this marina because of it’s great location near the beach and lots of dining options nearby. I was down for the count. My head was bursting and I needed to get off the boat. Kenny and I took a short walk, but we were so tired we went back to the boat for a nap. I felt horrible all day, not knowing if I was going to vomit or explode, so I stayed on the bed and tried to sleep. The guys went out for dinner. I had toast, took some Tylenol PM, and went to bed. I didn’t see any of Clearwater.
Lesson learned: If the weather looks better tomorrow…. WAIT FOR IT! There will most certainly be somebody, or perhaps another boat will come into the marina, or someone already there will decide to wait with you if you present the case for waiting. 20 hours is a very long time to be miserable, and with 177 miles, there’s really not an easy point to turn around and go back. It’s not that the forecast looked bad. If it had, we would not have gone at all. It looked good. And maybe for some people, that’s all in a day of boating. I’m just saying, consider your options and listen to your gut. At this point, it is a bad memory, and I’m sad that it has pretty much soured me on the thought of ever doing the Loop again. I’ll need to hear from LOTS of people that the Gulf can be calmer than that before I’ll ever think about crossing it again. I’m so very thankful for Kenny’s Captaining skills and his steadafast perseverance to get us across safely – and for his amazing mechanical alertness to keep Island Girl in top running condition. Laverne & Shirley ran great without a hiccup. I’m very thankful for having Wayne on board to give Kenny a break, because I couldn’t. I’m thankful to God for keeping His promise to get us across safely. And I know that tomorrow will be better.