On Friday, December 19^th, we motored east 27 miles from Apalachicola to Carrabelle Beach to stage for “the Crossing,” the leg from the panhandle of Florida across the Gulf to Florida’s west coast. For many loopers, traversing the 160+ miles of Gulf open waters, for the most part in the dark, and beginning and ending in crab pot infested waters, is the greatest source of anxiety of their entire 6,000-mile journey. We have crossed the Gulf dozens of times over the past thirty years, but we still appreciate that it should be undertaken with great care, preparation and respect for the vagaries of Mother Nature and all things mechanical (as Gold Looper Cheri Spann of Anchored Souls explained to us, “Everything on your boat is broken, you just don’t know it yet.”). Many loopers opt to skip crossing the Gulf altogether and instead travel in day hops along the “Rim Route,” hugging the coast as limited depths permit, stopping at Carrabelle, Steinhatchee, Cedar Key, and finally Tarpon Springs. Since we have already explored these quaint small towns on previous boat trips, we planned to cross from Carrabelle to Tarpon Springs.

We had timed our departure from Panama City based on an anticipated crossing window three days later (crossing starting the evening of Saturday the 20^th with arrival in Tarpon Springs on Sunday the 21^st). Long range forecasts were looking favorable, but as we got closer to the targeted crossing date, the weather window appeared to be narrowing, and once we were in Apalachicola, advisory reports from expert volunteers from AGLCA were advising that the first crossing opportunity might not be until Christmas Eve. George continued to study the weather and remained hopeful that we could cross as initially planned. So, with fingers crossed, we left Apalachicola on the 19^th to be poised to depart on the 20^th, but resigned that we might have to wait it out in Carrabelle for several more days. The AGLCA report on the 20^th revealed there was much discussion and debate among their volunteers about whether a boat with our criteria might be able to sneak in and make the crossing during a short opening from the night of the 20^th to morning of the 21^st. All agreed that the weather would begin deteriorating on the 21^st and there was no room for error, but tentatively, and with lots of caveats and warnings, the report showed a single day of green  (GO) starting with the evening of the 21^st.  We had pretty much already decided to go for it, but it sure was nice to see that the AGLCA experts didn’t universally think that was ill-advised.

We weighed anchor at 16:00 and headed to the Gulf through the east pass at Dog Island. When we arrived at the pass, just ahead of us we saw two other boats heading to the Gulf, Now or Never (headed to Tarpon Springs) and Incognito (headed to Clearwater). We traded information, and after that kept an extra VHF channel tuned to 68 so we could communicate with each other throughout the night. Shortly after departing the sun set and with no moon it was pitch black. It was nice to look out and see the steaming lights of the other two boats and know we were not alone.

We tend to keep a strict watch schedule when we are offshore, so that each of us has set times to rest. Initially we thought we would rotate two hours on with two hours off, but after the first two shifts, we switched to 3 hours on followed by 3 hours off. The extra hour of rest in between watch duties made a real difference, and when we rolled into Tarpon Springs around 11pm the next morning, both of us felt pretty good, despite being up for half the night each.

As overnight crossings go, this one was a delight. There was quite a bit of bashing when we started out, but within a few hours the waves started to settle down. This was the first crossing we have ever steered from an inside helm – what a game changer! George still misses the feel of a sailboat, but Chris was quite happy to be snug inside out of the elements with no need to wear a harness and strap in like we always did on the sailboats. And the instruments at the inside helm of the Ranger Tug – what a luxury! Dual chart plotters, one extra-large, and screens that can display both a backwards looking camera (no sneaking up on us), and a nighttime FLIR camera with 360-degree views (which came in super handy in the dark when we started coming across crab pots 35 miles out of Anclote Key, which is still an hour out from Tarpon Springs). You can see from the photos of the view from the helm that with no moon to provide light, we were navigating in total darkness, relying solely on our instruments.

We were patting ourselves on the back as we moseyed up the Anclote River on our way to Tarpon Springs Yacht Club where we had arranged a slip for the night, when just before the final turn off the busy fairway, we were “pulled over” by a Pinellas County sheriff in an inflatable boat, who informed us that were we going too fast (in reality, we were barely above idle speed, and were being passed on all sides by other boats). We did notice that he waited until we passed him to confirm that “we were not from these here parts” before turning on his flashing blue lights. The sheriff was initially quite gruff, but George’s unfailing politeness and the fact that all our papers were in order and promptly presented eventually softened him up, and he issued a warning instead of a ticket.

We naively thought the worst was behind us: Successful crossing –  check; Narrow weather window threaded – check; Grumpy local police mollified – check!  And then the universe said, “Hold my beer.” As we turned off the main river fairway to make our way through the cut to the Yacht Club, the water depths dropped precipitously. We were following precisely the directions provided by the Yacht Club, it was near high tide, and the Club’s dockmaster and manager had previously assured us that there would be plenty of depth for our approach, but despite this there were mere inches beneath our forward-facing props (yikes) and the riverbed. At one point, our depth gauge reported -2.7’ (yes, a negative number). If you are wondering why we were not at this point aground, I should explain that our depth gauge is set with a 3.5’ offset to account for the props beneath the boat. I think if we felt like we could safely turn around, we might have, but at this point going in any direction seemed perilous, so we continued, hoping we would make it to the Yacht Club which was now in sight.

If the last ten minutes had not been absurd enough, a large pod of mating dolphins (yes, mating) were irresistibly drawn to the stern of our boat, and so attracted by the spectacle, several small boats, a group of kayakers, and a father and daughter on paddleboards flocked to us as we tried to maneuver our much larger boat through the narrow and shallow approach to our slip. Somehow, we made it and Assisted Living survived unscathed.