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| Skippers weather meeting with "Buddy" |
It’s about the WEATHER! For those of you who regularly read
this blog, it know that statement is getting tiresome and I will not use it
again, unless necessary. Tom Conrad provides weather musings every day to Loopers
preparing to make the crossing. He consults several weather services and uses
the one that has most recently been getting it correct. We also consulted “Buddy”
in the striped shirt and mud boots, the weather guru for the Moorings Marina in
Carrabelle. Buddy did not like the weather and told us not to leave, as much as schedules should never influence decisions on the water, the next window would be in a week or so. All 8 Looper ready to cross left at their appointed times.
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| A beautiful Gulf Sunset for our Crossing |
Tom gave us the weather window from Monday noon to Tuesday
noon, with a strong storm expected on Tuesday evening into Wednesday. Tom was
spot on we had strong 2 foot waves when we departed Monday noon for three hours
then the seas settled, the wind shifted from the southeast to the northeast
later in the evening. We took turns standing watch while the auto pilot did the
work, even with this following sea, usually a severe problem for our auto
pilot, he/she did exceedingly well and we did not need to steer during the
entire trip.
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| Our Hitchhiker |
In the afternoon we had a hitchhiker perch on our sundeck
roof for quite a while, flew off, landed on the radar arch, then back to the
roof, we decided it was a good omen since Mike Batzner carved us a wooden bird
very similar to our hitchhiker. Mike’s bird stands on our deck just ahead of
the inside helm.
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| Keeping a sharp lookout |
The trip is long, 22 hours being pushed about by wind and
waves, especially with a following sea. About 1:30 the moon set, and the night
got DARK!!! All our instruments can be dimmed so we can retain our night
vision, but DARK means no light all that can be observed are the lights of
another boat. We do have radar but do not use it much and it provided no
targets on our crossing. To be exact we saw only the lights of our buddy boats
and three other Loopers that started after us.
As the sun rose over Clearwater, we began to relax a little,
but needed to keep a sharp eye for crab pot floats that, if run over, can wrap
around the propeller shaft of the boat ruining the day. We used our SPOT device
all night to plot our location, it can be seen by clicking the link ‘Current
Location” in the column to the left, several people get a text message when we
click the SPOT. It is a little like dropping bread crumbs for others to follow
if necessary. When we regained cell coverage we each received 30 text messages
from our spot device and well wishes from our very supportive family. The good
thing about the crossing was it was quite boring, no major events or problems.
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| Clearwater at sunrise 6:51 AM |
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