Our first Manatees, Staging in Carrabelle and our Big Crossing to Tarpon Springs

November 19 Through November 28 (Click on the images to see and scroll them in full size)

Saturday Nov 19, we stayed 2nd day in Panama City at Point South Marina. The weather did not look great and we are in no hurry. Sunday, we left the marina and got around 4 miles up the ICW when I got a phone call from the dock master and I learned the benefits of a departure checklist. I forgot my shore power adapter cord which we had to go back for. We spent the rest of the day catching up to Encore. We anchored past the bend at Saul Creek, no phones Beautiful anchorage, and we watched 5-6 manatees playing in the river. Unfortunately no pictures because the water was very murky and we never got good pictures.

On Monday, we arrived in Carrabelle, FL. We had read about a marina called The Moorings, but we also discovered the benefit of calling around. We saved $2.00 a foot for our time here and saved $.50 a gallon (on over 100 gallons of diesel by staying just down the road at C-Quarters marina. The next day we walked over to the daily 5:00 PM looper crossing meeting at the Moorings. I am still struggling with water under starboard side cabinets and water in the engine bilge at the end of the day. So I de-watered bilge and dried cabinets, topped off water and overflow for 10 min, no wetness, also ran air for hours, no wet. Yay, that means it isn't my water tanks or the air conditioner.

Over the 5 days that we spent at Carabelle, we did lots of walking and ate at several very cool restaurants while we waited for our weather window which was beginning to look more and more like either Thursday night or Friday night.

On Thursday, we had Thanksgiving dinner buffet at the Crooked River Grill, isolated water issue to our wet exhaust and removed bad section of anchor line, re-splicing the line to the anchor chain. I ran the engine for 20 minutes or so to wind the windlass back up after re-splicing my anchor chain. Guess what? Water under the cabinets. It looks like my engine wet exhaust is the culprit. Don't know how to fix it, but at least I know what it is and I can get it addressed when we take the boat out at Indian Town to go home for the holidays. That night, we did a Zoom call with all of the kids which was a lot of fun.

Friday, November 25th we finally said goodbye to C-Quarters and Carrabelle where we spent 5 days waiting for good crossing weather, and headed out for our 156 mile overnight crossing of the Gulf of Mexico to Tarpon Springs. We dropped our lines at 3:45 and headed into a THICK fog with two other boats, Encore and another boat who's crew we had met at one of the crossing briefings we attended. It was a good crossing, (And by that I mean uneventful) Aside from thick fog on our departure as well as engine trouble with the 3rd boat in our group which ended up resolving itself and watching for crab pots for the last 40 miles in thick fog, we did have an uneventful crossing.

Crab pots are traps that sit on the bottom and are attached to a 6-9 inch buoy and if you catch one in your propeller shaft you need to dive down and cut it away. They are particularly fun to find when you are traveling at 10 miles and hour in a heavy fog with 40-50 feet of visibility. Fortunately in the last 40 miles, we only ran across 2 dozen or so and only a few were directly in our path.

If you love good Greek food, Tarpon Springs is the place to be. It is also the sponge diving capitol of the United States, sponge divers still work the waters off of Tarpon Springs and you can buy sea sponges in pretty much any shop near the docks.

Sunday, we had lunch with Joel, Sharon Cook's (a friend of mine from Milwaukee) nephew who lives in Tarpon Springs just a few blocks from where we were docked.

Glenn and I also worked on planning for our next segment down to the Okeechobee where we will cross the middle of Florida to Indiantown where we will have Patriot hauled out while we go home for a month during the holidays. Will post again once we get to Indiantown.