Yesterday morning Blue Moon was fueled up, pumped out and ready to go. We had to hang around until noon to time our gulf crossing to get into Tarpon Springs without tangling up in crab pots in the dark. While we were waiting we took a last bike ride around town and caught up on never ending boat chores. At low tide I looked out and spotted this eagle on the shore.
I took this a good sign of things to come.
Noon finally came and we set off with our buddy boat, Untide, Warren and Monica. It was a near perfect day with winds of maybe 4 mph. Soon as we got into the channel our dolphin buddies came to play.
I was quite proud of this photo. They stayed with us for quite awhile.
We approached the East Pass about two hours later that put us into the Gulf of Mexico. I was so relieved to see that it was pretty much flat. Earlier in the day we had filed our float plan with the Browns and Karen had sent me some "hang in there girl, you can do this" type of emails to reassure me. Thanks Karen!
We were pretty pumped up and on a sugar high from some excellent cookies that Monica had given us before we left. Eventually the sun set and it was pretty spectacular.
I looked for the green flash but again, not this time.
Boating in the dark is like boating blind. You can see the front of the bow in the glow of the navigation lights but that's it. It was a very clear night and the stars put on a real show. We settled in and kept our eyes set on the radar and we were very lucky that there was just a gentle rock of the boat in the near perfect crossing wave condition.
We took turns at watch and trying to nap. The Captain can fall asleep on demand but I'm not so lucky. I maybe got 2 hours of broken sleep all night. The sleeping with one eye open style.
There were 6 of us in our little gulf floatilla and it was comforting to hear the banter back and forth on the VHF radio between us and to look out and see their lights in the black of the night. I kept the tv on to help keep us awake. After a bit it was pretty clear that this crossing that I was so worried about was going to be a piece of cake.
Still, I was very happy when the sun came up.
Not spectacular but very welcoming.
Soon the shoreline appeared in front of us and before long we navigated through the narrow channel into Tarpon Springs to the Turtle Cove Marina. They tried to stuff us into a too narrow dock. Blue Moon is quite wide so they moved us to a larger dock. 3 other looper boats joined us here and we were all quite tired and happy when we met on land to congratulate ourselves. Later we all went out for dinner together at a wonderful Greek restaurant. It seems we have landed in Greece here as it has a rather large Greek community. They fish and harvest sponges and prepare wonderful food. I visited the little chachkee shops while Dave did some boat chores.
Now its Tuesday morning and when I woke up I felt really great that the dreaded crossing is behind us, incident free and now I can relax! We might leave this morning and head to Clearwater which is only 11 miles south of here. We are only about 47 miles from crossing our wake in Longboat Key and completing the Great Loop. Then we can switch out our white AGLCA flag for a gold one which signifies completion of the loop. We are still a long way from Pt. Breeze and still undecided about whether to leave the boat down south for a season or two but will have to figure that out pretty soon.
Last winter we had this map made to celebrate our big adventure. It is a wood carving of the route we took and some of the special places we stopped. Someday when all this is over we will take it out of the boat and hang it in our home to have a nice memory of the big trip.
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