The Crossing

On Saturday, we left from Fairhope, Alabama and continued to make our way East. We were pushing hard to make it to Apalachicola, FL to catch a good weather window to cross The Gulf to Tampa. This is a section of the Loop where you are far from land and you need good wind and small waves. Also, you want to leave before sunset and then go overnight and arrive late morning for visibility purposes. The gulf has crab pots scattered through out the coast and you have to dodge them.

After leaving Fairhope, our next marina was in Orange Beach, Alabama. We were able to have a short day, clean the boat, do laundry and rest up a bit, as we knew the next couple of days would be hard! On Sunday we left and had planned about a 10 hour day. We saw a lot of birds, jelly fish, sunken boats and our first good dolphin encounter. The dolphins like to play in the wake of the boat!

We reached our initially planned anchorage at about 4 pm. Because we had about 1.5 hours more daylight, made the decision to keep pushing and our 10 hour day turned into a 13 hour day. We pushed on in the dark to find an anchorage in the West Bay. It was a little harrowing once the sun went down. We were navigating a narrow channel, so Dea was on our spot light illuminating the shore and Larry drove the boat.

We dropped anchor in the pitch dark, and fortunately there was another boat in the bay, so that helped us feel like we were OK! The next morning we were up at 5:30 am and underway. Our goal was to reach Apalachicola Bay, about 75 miles away. From there, you launch to The Crossing!

We made it to the Apalachicola Bay Anchorage at 3:30p. From there, we just kept on going, planning for the next 185 miles to Clearwater, FL. Our navigation system told us about a 1-2 pm arrival time. We had been texting with seasoned Loopers Tsali and Jacque, and getting their advise on weather conditions and safety etc. We felt really good with their advice and that they were tracking us along the way on the Nebo app (a boating app that tracks your location).

From 6:15 pm to 12:15 am, waves were under 2 feet on the bow and pretty smooth and comfortable .

Around 12:30 the waves kicked up to more like 3 feet, plus the winds increased significantly. It was unsafe to get up and move around without holding tightly to handrails. At one point, the waves were so rough that our iPad flew out of its holder onto the floor. At first, we did not realize it hit our auto pilot, radar, and VHF on-off switch. With the auto pilot off, we were tossed pretty roughly in the waves for a few minutes. We were pretty panicked. And then we saw our radio was off and not working. We had hit the water so hard we initially thought something had gone wrong with the electrical systems. We then realized all of these systems had just been switched off at the helm control panel because the iPad landed on them. Once we turned all the systems back on, we regained good control of the boat, and were back on track. Given the rougher conditions, we stayed put in our chairs for the most part until around 5a. It then started to smooth out pretty significantly, and by sunrise it was lovely with under 1 foot waves.

We did have a few extra visitors on our trip, flying fish!

In total, we traveled for 32 hours and 286 miles. During that time we each took about three 90-minute naps. We were so happy to reach our Marina in Clearwater, FL at about 2 pm! Thanks to you all for your continued prayers for our journey!