Day 71: Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Port to Port: Carabbelle to Steinhatchee, Florida
Underway: 0:00 am Motor Off: 0:00 pm Miles Traveled: 90+ Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First night passage.
Mile to Mile: Close your eyes and imagine driving into 3-4 foot rollers with a 5+ footer thrown in just for the fun of it – all aiming straight at you every 3-4 seconds. Throw in some salty spray, lots of new noises, no lights anywhere you look beyond your little boat and the wind whistling through the stays. This was definitely a memorable day – one that we don’t care to repeat anytime soon.
We left early as expected. The weather was supposed to moderate after noon and become a moderate to light winds overnight. The first thing we saw as we were leaving was a large powerboat sitting tipped to the side high and dry on a mud flat just a few feet off the main channel – someone had not considered the large tidal changes and ended up stuck until the next high tide. Not a good omen I guess.
Today was a good example of how hard it is to decide whether to go or stay. We did our homework. All the weather sources we considered said conditions would be okay for a crossing – the best opening for at least 4 days. Other boaters who we considered very experienced and conservative also left the same day. The only outlier was James from C-Quarters Marina. He has a lot of experience on the Gulf. We saw him as we were leaving and he said that if the leaves on the palm tree in front of the marina were moving that we should wait for a different day. Well, the leaves were moving – just a bit – but they were moving. We should have listened to James. Everyone who crossed was beat up by the waves – especially as they turned southeast and got slewed around by the waves coming from the north and northeast. Seasickness, turned over furniture and lots of wood-knocking was going on for the next 25+ hours.
We had to keep going east to take the waves on the bow as turning more south gave Aurora a hard to control motion. The most disconcerting part was when it got dark – there was no moon, no stars, no lights and no horizon – just blackness everywhere outside the boundary of our boat and our running lights. Yikes. We were not bored for one second. Between dealing with minor problems, replotting our course, comparing notes with other boats, watching out for things to hit (like crab pots), trying to stay semi-dry and forcing ourselves to eat a little, we were kept busy just trying to make it to the next waypoint.
Aurora and Boris worked amazingly well. Aurora was only stopped dead a handful of times by large oddly spaced waves and Boris just kept puttering along as if nothing was happening at all. Before it got dark, the dolphin put on quite a show – jumping effortlessly out the back of one wave into the front of the next. They had a calming effect on us during the day. They made it look so easy. I think we had it better though, than the little sparrows we saw on occasion 25 miles from shore trying to fly into the wind just a few feet off the water – they couldn’t rest even for a few seconds. I wonder where they got their weather forecast.
Movie Clip of It’ll Be Alright Crossing the Gulf (DSCF3531)
After traveling east until well after dark we came to a decision point. We needed to turn or bailout. Our friends on It’ll Be Alright (a 44’ C&C) were also getting beat up and decided to anchor outside of Steinhatchee – our original planned destination. We needed to turn south or go into port at night – both difficult decisions. We were tired, damp, Cindy was borderline nauseous and we still had 20+ hours to go to get to Tarpon Springs. We would not get there until dark – not a good thing after not sleeping for that many hours. We decided to go to Steinhatchee.
You don’t know how relieved we were to finally see the green flashing buoy marking the end of the Steinhatchee channel – the first sign of civilization we had seen since the sun set. We soon saw a single white light off to the south – It’ll Be Alright’s anchor light. It seemed to take forever to get there but we finally started down the long channel into Steinhatchee dodging the many unlit markers in between the lighted ones and we finally arrived in calm water and at a dock a little after midnight. Never has a pelican-poop covered dock been so welcome a sight. We tied up, hugged each other, and went immediately to sleep. We survived to sail another day.