After a sleepless night troubling over whether we should Go or Stay, we decide to cast off at noon for the 24 hr+ crossing. The open water part of the journey will be 150 miles and once we clear the pass, generally 50 miles from any coastline. We know we can turn around if we start to have "issues" even after we make our way out into the open water. Since we will have several hours of running time under our belts by the time we make the big turn out of the East Pass at Dog Island, we have yet another "fail safe" point to turn back if there are problems.
We pack our "ditch bag" (the things we will put in the dinghy if we have to abandon ship). The bags include the stuff we need to protect (wallets, ID, parrot cage with floats, Mr Tricks the cat's travel cage with life preserver/floats) and emergency gear (flares, Emergency Position Indicating Rescue Beacon (EPIRB), floating handheld VHF radios with Digital Selective Calling (DSC) another emergency tool that can broadcast our unique profile ID with a GPS position, water, energy bars..............). The mood is serious................
We cast off (Jean heads off with the car to meet us in Tarpon Springs) and all seems to be running smoothly. The route is all open water from channel marker R2 at Dog Island/East Pass to R4 at the channel entrance to the Anclote River at Tarpon Springs. When we get to East Pass/Dog River, we set the autopilot for the pre-planned route we've programmed into the chartplotter. A little hiccup ensues, since we've gone a little further past the starting point of the route when the autopilot takes control, it immediately turns us around to get "to the beginning of the route". Ha Ha, NOT!!!!
Between Pat, Ray and me we plan to stand 3 hour "watches" at the upper helm to make the journey. Starting at noon in Appalachicola, this means we will all have several watches until we arrive sometime at mid day on Saturday. We "see" a beautiful sunset on Friday and then the cruising is on instruments only until the moonrise at 2am. Down below, all the night time "red" lighting is ON to keep our night vision (shades of Hunt for Red October I want to say in an appropriate Sean Connery accent). We pass/cross a few other boats along the way, but in general it's a very "solo" crossing. As the sun comes up Saturday, all's well as we enter the Anclote River channel on Saturday morning. Of course everyone in the Tarpon Springs/Tampa area with a boat is heading out for the weekend. We have a bumpy ride in to the marina dodging the wake of all these other boaters.
After tying up and turning the AC on, Jean meets us and we head to the marina pool/hot tub for a relaxing soak, hot shower and well deserved nap. Later that evening we walk to the city docks and have a fantastic seafood meal at one of the best greek restaurants in town. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
