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.
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