Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019
Ahoy there! In our last post we mentioned a potential ship wreck! (Dramatic pause…)
Here’s the story mateys! (Use your inside voice as a pirate to make this more fun!)
Aye, f’shor we be mindin’ our own bizness, moving ‘long through the last of the panhandle’s GIWW, ya see. Twas a beaut of a day, the sun shinin’, an a light wind was a floatin’ by. Then, off yonder comin’ right fer us, in the midst of the channel we seez somethin’ lookin’ like 2 shrimpers waaay too close ta-gether. Capn sez, “Aye mateys, ye thinks that is comin at us aint quite right?” Weez all ‘greed with’im. As they ventured nearer, we seez a little shrimper boat in fron’ta bigger un. An’ she’s a towin’ the big un behind ‘er! Tis a sad sight indeed!
Suddenly, that radio machine is a callin’ t’us, an tis da shrimpers theirselves! Capn snaps up the speaker t’answer. They be tellin us bout a mean hazard further up ta channel. "Watch out!” they sez. “Marker 18’s bent o’er an sittin’ right there, smack dab in the middle o’ta channel jus below the waterline. Can’t seez it less tis too late! Ats what happen t’us! We ran right o’er it”
Lemme tell ya, they be some mighty fine sailors! Saved us from a terble fate! Aaahrr Capn radios ta there Capn a prodigious thank ye (as any good Capn would do) an we continued movin ‘long. Wouldn’t ya know it, as we be gettin nearer where that marker 18 s’posed ta be, t’aint there! Capn sez we better be keepin’ it way off ta our port side, that where it should be poking high out ta the sea. Jus as we be goin by, we seez the marker sign flat, foatin atop the water, an that post is a pokin straight up ta the waterline ready ta skewer any boat a comin by!
Twas a lucky day fer shor, comin upon that shrimper Capn - such a great man he is! He prob’ly saved us from a watery demise.
Now in English:
We were once again helped by a commercial captain. We met two shrimp boats while making our way from Apalachicola to Carrabelle. One boat was towing the other (a little strange, but I understand that boats sometime break 😉). As we got closer, the lead boat called us on VHF. He warned us that Marker 18 (a few miles ahead of us) had been knocked over in the middle of the channel and was now below the waterline and not visible until you were right on it. We thanked him for the warning. As we approached Marker 18, we could see why his warning was so valuable. The marker was a fixed wooden post in the middle of the charted channel that had been hit, bent over, and had now become a potential underwater harpoon for any vessel determined to follow the middle of the channel (which most people do to avoid running aground on the edges of the channel). Would we have been suspicious of the missing marker and avoided this hazard on our own? I hope so, but who knows. We were once again helped by a commercial captain.
We are now in Carrabelle, Florida. Nice little town in the Florida panhandle, but still recovering from Hurricane Michael. In some ways, it is the perfect town for Loopers. Ace Hardware within two blocks of the marina, IGA grocery within 3 blocks, and a marine supply store 2 blocks the other direction. There are two restaurants: Fisherman’s Wife – good food with a country diner ambiance just past the IGA grocery store; or Harry’s Bar and Packaged Liquors, just past the world’s smallest police station (see photo). They have a robust beer list and an outdoor grill/restaurant next door (Marine Street Grill) that will take orders and bring them over to the bar. A sign above the bar reads: “Welcome to Florida, Now Go Home.” Smoking indoors is allowed here, so that takes some getting used to. It’s not your typical Florida tourist destination, but it’s the end of the GIWW along the panhandle, so it's THE place to jump off from to get to Tarpon Springs, where the GIWW starts up again.
And so we wait here for a good weather window to make “the crossing” over to the west coast of Florida. We have two options to get from Carrabelle to Tarpon Springs. Both options require good-weather so the seas are fairly flat and the tides and winds prevent the shallow water from becoming too shallow.
Option 1: Overnight crossing (17-19 hours), 175 miles, about 40 miles offshore. We would leave Carrabelle around 3pm and arrive a few miles offshore of Tarpon Springs around 10am the following morning. Arriving late morning allows for the sun to be high enough to avoid glare while watching for the numerous crab pot floats in the Tarpon Springs area. (Wrapping a crab pot line around your propeller is a bad way to start the day).
Option 2: Multiple days (in the daylight), in 60-80-mile segments. Each requires traveling about 20-30 miles offshore to avoid crab pots in the shallow water. (Possible route: Carrabelle, to Steinhatchee, to Cedar Key (an anchorage), possibly to Crystal River, and finally to Tarpon Springs.) While you can make this route with a series of day trips, it requires a minimum of 3 good weather days to make each segment of the trip. It is very unusual to get three good weather days in a row this time of year, so you must be willing to wait it out if necessary. In addition, most of the above harbors are very shallow; low tides and strong north winds lower the water levels to a point that you can be stuck at a given location for multiple days. (Yikes!) We also consider that if delayed at the anchorage, the dinghy would be required to get to shore for Bo, not his preference or ours.
We have been watching the weather forecast very closely over the past few days, and it looks like an overnight crossing will be our best option (but we will change plans if the forecast changes).
In the meantime, enjoy your local weather, as we will ours, and we’ll give you an update when we arrive in Tarpon Springs, after having a good long nap.
Nautically yours,
Brian & Sue