Day 89: Sunday, December 2, 2012
Port to Port: Crystal River to Hudson, Florida
Underway: 6:40 am Motor Off: 3:40 pm Miles Traveled: 49.6 Stayed At: Dock
First Things First: First time staying at a someone’s dock. Happy Birthday Mom!
Mile to Mile: After an early start on another beautiful travel day on the Gulf, we cruised south and east on the same course almost all day following the 10-12 foot depth line. Very light winds, warm sunshine and more dolphins balanced out the hassle of dodging crab pots. We were startled to see how clear the water was as we got closer to Hudson – we were in 8+ feet of water but it looked like you could touch bottom. We stared at the depth finder for a long time to be sure we wouldn’t hit something.
After an easy cruise down the coast and long trek up a narrow channel, we pulled up unannounced to Bill and Kate’s dock at about 3:40 pm to a very warm welcome. Who are Bill and Kate you ask? Well, this is a long and interesting story that started way back in Carabbelle. I was sitting in a rocking chair on the deck outside the marina office working on the blog and a couple with two dogs walked up out of the darkness and we greeted each other. They sat down to remove sand burrs from their dogs feet and fur and we started talking. This is how we met Chip and Traci which led us to a random dock in Hudson, Florida.
Chip asked a lot of questions about our trip and the Great Loop. You could see the wheels turning (Looper mania starting?). We talked for over an hour. By the time our conversation was done, we had exchanged information and they had volunteered to give us a ride to Tallahassee to get a rental car if we ended up being stranded in Carabbelle through the weekend (we had flights from Tampa to Minnesota a little over a week later that we needed to get to). Chip emailed an old friend of his in Hudson (a little north of Tarpon Springs) who lives in a channel community with a dock (this happened to be Bill). Well Bill emailed me back saying any friend of Chips is a friend of his and offered use of his dock – we could even leave the boat there while we went back to Minnesota. Wow. Amazing. Well, we thought this was a offer we couldn’t refuse. Not only did it sound like a great adventure, but Hudson made our planned crossing of the Gulf 3-4 hours shorter. So we emailed Bill back explaining our plans to cross soon and he wished us luck and safe travels.
Well, as you may know, our plans changed and we ended up in Steinhatchee after our Gulf crossing. We emailed Bill and Kate to tell them our change of plans and that we didn’t know when (or if) we would get to Hudson. They were relieved to hear we were safe and extended their offer again for whenever we got down there. We really appreciated the offer and told them we would keep in contact.
We ended up staying in Steinhatchee and never got a long enough weather window to run down the coast. We went home for Thanksgiving and returned to Steinhatchee. We didn’t know how things were going to go and we didn’t want anyone worrying about us – especially people we have never met – so we didn’t email our plans.
We cruised into their dock at 3:40 pm to an amazing welcome. Bill happened to be in the yard and made a wild guess when he asked, “Are you Mike and Cindy?”. (Actually, he saw the MN tags on the front of Aurora and made a pretty educated guess that this little sailboat from MN was the long lost Aurora). Well, that was the beginning of an amazing experience. We soon were tied up securely to their floating dock, enjoyed wonderful hot showers, shared an amazing dinner of roast beef, rice and gravy and hours of hilarious conversation with perfect strangers. It can’t get any more perfect than this and was well worth the wait. And, to think, we almost kept going to Tarpon Springs. Now we are definitely going to stay at least one more night to decompress, go shopping, clean the boat and enjoy more of Bill and Kate’s company. Before the night was over we had already planned an ebelskiver party for tomorrow night. Can the universe be any more aligned?
