Christmas in Florida

Christmas is just supposed to be white - not just dreaming about it  - but actually have some honest snow on the ground. Go sledding. Make a snowman or a snow angel. Have a snowball fight or throw a few at unsuspecting cars rolling down Seminole Ave.  In our childhood memories, Christmas is always white. 

OK, maybe not this year.  After Clearwater Beach, we headed to Gulfport where we left the boat (and Millie) for a few days to have a little Christmas time with our kids in Portland, ME.  Please don't worry about Millie. We found her a very posh pet hotel for the week.  She had lots of walks, good buddies to hang out with and even had a nice bath before she returned to Egret.  

This dude was one of the most authentic-looking Santas we've seen.  Forget the Palm Trees and blue water in the background, and he could be straight from the North Pole.   

From Gulfport, we moved a few miles to St. Petersburg where we would spend Christmas.  St. Petersburg was great fun with tons of museums, restaurants, and activities going on along the pier right next to Egret. We enjoyed a Christmas Eve service at the local Episcopal church but it wasn't the St. Paul's pagent.    Sadly, we were caught by the same cold front that enveloped the entire east coast and our temperatures plummeted to the low thirties.  Relative to the rest of the east coast that's not too bad, but when you're living on a boat - it's pretty chilly. Unfortunately for Millie, she got a much-needed grooming right before the cold weather so she was a bit cold on our walks. And then, a few days later, sadly for Millie, she had a bit of a mishap in her transition from the boat to the dock one morning.  Her take-off was good but she must have slipped a little and only managed to land her two front paws on the dock. From which point Roger was a little slow to react and she went in the drink.  No worries; a quick shower to get rid of the salt water and she was as good as new.

"Docktails" are a tradition among the loopers, and they are pretty much what they sound like. This, however, was the largest one we have attended so far.

These folks in Gulfport went all out!

A pretty impressive display in the rigging of a sailboat.

St. Petersburg

The Chihuly Collection of glass blowing was pertty impressive.  We also enjoyed the demonstration. 

We gained newfound respect for Salvador Dali at his museum in St. Pete. We both studied him a bit in college and realized there's much more to his art than some melting clocks.

We made it

 All of our good planning and preparation for the crossing paid off!! Roger got up at 5:45 am and took Millie to shore wearing a headlamp and using a navigation app on his phone as it was pitch dark.  The shore was about fifty yards closer than the day before as it was low tide - no issues, a little bump and Millie was off and running on the beach.  On these trips to the shore, Millie knows exactly why she's there and performs like a champ.  Back on Egret, dinghy raised on the swim platform and we were underway at 6:30 am - right on schedule. Three other boats were out in front, having left 2 hours earlier than us and headed further south to Clearwater; otherwise, we were by ourselves.   

The two aspects of the weather we were concerned with were wind and waves.  All the forecasts were lined up perfectly.  We didn't really look at forecasts for fog and rain.  Sure enough, there was some early morning fog which is normal, but then we got rain - the fog cleared and then returned.  Everything cleared up by noon and we were in the clear.  We ran at about 19 knots through waves that were about one foot.  We felt a little cheated as some of our friends had dead flat calm seas on the overnight passage. 

Most loopers travel with a buddy boat when doing the crossing. There are positives and negatives to traveling with a buddy boat.  We travel fast and we were making the crossing in daylight.  There weren't any other loopers who wanted to do that, and we weren't willing to sit around Carabelle waiting for any.  So we were out in the Gulf, no land in sight, no boats in sight for six hours until we started to see some fishing boats.  

We also started to see the little devilish crab buoys about 35 miles offshore.  The buoys were generally in a line about fifty yards apart.  Chrisy has an eagle eye and would spot them well off our port side, follow the line across our bow and predict when we needed to alter course.  Everything that we read about the crossing prepared us for a density of crab buoys worse than Maine.  Apparently, those loopers have never been to Christmas Cove.  We had no issues with the crab pots. With about ten miles to go and land in sight the seas calmed down to dead flat calm and our speed went up to 20 knots, our fuel consumption went down, and we cruised into our anchorage right a little ahead of schedule (7 1/2 hours - as a side note, some fellow Loopers who went through the night spent 21 1/2 hours making the same crossing).

With the Gulf crossing behind us, the crew of Egret had a pretty nice sense of accomplishment.  Admittedly, we didn't do any hard work. Egret did all of the hard work.  She's a beauty, but she's also a beast.  We recorded RPMs, fuel consumption, oil pressure,  and oil temperature every hour of the trip.  Nothing changed for seven and a half hours.  She could have run like that until the fuel ran out.  We heard a few stories from other boats of mechanical issues during the crossing - not Egret, thankfully.

We anchored off of Tarpon Springs at Anclote Key.  We launched the dinghy and gave Millie a well-deserved trip to shore.  When we returned we were greeted by dolphins and manatees.  Manatees are massive walrus-looking mammals that surface long enough to get a quick gulp of air. They hang out a few feet below the surface so they are frequent victims of boaters.  They're endangered so we felt honored that they would greet us after our crossing. 

After a night at anchor, we moved into Tarpon Springs City Marina and Mar Marina for three nights.  The good weather that gave us a nice crossing continued and we enjoyed a much-needed bike ride and lots of good walks around town.  Tarpon Springs has lots of Greek culture and the food was pretty amazing.  Chrisy got a few nights off from cooking. Tarpon Springs is the home of the Greek sponge diving boats that gather sponges by hooking or diving in the Gulf of Mexico - an industry that started in the early 1900's. The sponges are sorted and left to dry along the docks, and the boats make a very interesting sight, especially at Christmas time as they are all lit up with Christmas lights at night. A variety of natural sponges are sold in the local shops in Tarpon Springs.

We have spent the last several days anchored in the Mandalay Channel, right by Clearwater Beach. The anchorage is among some beautiful homes and some derelict boats, but it has everything we could ask for - great protection from all winds, access to a free dinghy dock closeby, access to the beach, restauarnts, tennis coutrt, pickleball court and church. Yes, Chrisy and I played tennis for the first time on this trip, after a very enjoyable church service where the minister talked abut choices one makes in life. We will stay here until Tuesday afternoon; at which point, we will head further south.

A little rest on the foredeck post-crossing.

Sunset at Anclote key

Fellow loopers at anchor at Anclote Key

Chrisy relaxing mid-ride in Destin

Christmas in Florida

Chrisy was tempted.

Crossing the Gulf

One of the most anticipated/feared segments of the Great Loop is crossing the Gulf of Mexico from the Panhandle to the west coast.  There are very few/no acceptable anchorages around the rim of Florida so there are generally two routes. The first takes several long hops around the rim, first to Steinhatchee then to Cedar Key, and finally to Crystal River before arriving in Tarpon Springs.  And - you guessed it - then there is the direct route - 132 nautical miles from Carabelle to Tarpon Springs.  There are two ways to transit the direct route, either overnight if you're a slower boat or all daylight if you're a fast boat. The multi-hop and the direct route each require a good weather window as you are out in the Gulf either way.

When we started our conversations about doing the Great Loop and Chrisy realized that there would be some open water passages her solution was: "Great - you'll get a buddy to jump on the boat for 24 hours, and I'll rent a car and take Millie and meet you in Tarpon Springs."  You need to understand that Roger's record with weather forecasting for offshore passages has been less than perfect so Chrisy's apprehension is perfectly understandable.  As the crossing approached and our planning to get a buddy on board failed, it became clear that Chrisy would be on board and Roger would need to do some better forecasting.  Fortunately, there are tons of tools to assist with the job and there are also tons of boaters who are making the exact same decision.  Even more fortunately, a massive weather window opened for us that would be hard to miss.  

So we accelerated our trip through the Panhandle and off we went. Our decision has been made - to make the trip directly leaving a nice anchorage (off of Dog Island) just outside of Carabelle that will cut off about five miles at around 6:30 AM on Monday.  We hope to travel around 17-18 knots which should allow us to arrive in Tarpon Springs in the early afternoon. That's the preferred arrival time as the sun will be behind us and will provide us with nice visibility to see all the crab pots that await us.  The little devils can ruin your day if you run over them.