January 7-18, 2018
Back in Panama City, we reprovisioned the boat, and waited for the weather to clear. We get our break, though it’s a bit foggy. Thankful for radar, we head to the ocean once again, and head for Port St. Joe. We notice a vessel on radar, and as we approach at a safe distance, we are hailed on the VHF radio. The mystery boat in the fog is a government Special Ops boat performing a dive mission. They ask us to give them ¼ mile clearance, as they have two anchors out with 600 feet of scope each as well as divers in the water. We gladly oblige. The sun comes out and we have a beautiful day for a sail! It is very therapeutic to be back on the water, with the sun on your face, and the wind in your hair. We arrive to Port St. Joe and find a cute little town. We also run into several loopers who have evidently been here awhile, waiting to make the crossing. We arrived and were not even tied up to the dock when we were bombarded with a million questions and stories. It was quite the welcome!
“The crossing” can be a much anticipated and dreaded part of the Great Loop. It is an open water crossing of the Gulf of Mexico that takes slower boats like us over 24 hours to complete. Port St. Joe, Apalachicola, and Carrabelle were all full of loopers waiting to make the crossing to the eastern coast of Florida. This January weather was proving difficult to make the crossing, so many loopers were stacked up in these town, waiting for a good weather break. Many loopers cross the Gulf of Mexico to Tarpon Springs or Clearwater. We had hoped to avoid a long crossing for Rilee’s sake (since she refuses to use a potty pad on the boat), and instead hop down the forgotten coast. After talking to locals and getting more information, we decided most of the northern stops would be too shallow for us, especially with the extreme tides we were experiencing due to the Super Blue Blood Moon. Instead, we decided to head to Apalachicola and prepare for the shortest crossing possible, to Tarpon Springs.
Finally able to traverse the GIWW again, we head for Apalachicola. The weather is so cold and dreary, and I am starting to come down with something. I hold it together until we get to dock, and then I am off to a warm bed, thankful for electricity and heat tonight. I stayed in bed pretty much for the next several days, snuggled up with Rilee and watching old Friends episodes. I’ll let Chad take it from here and tell you all about Apalachicola!
Apalachicola was a super cool town on the forgotten coast of Florida! With Michelle sick, I entrusted second mate Rilee with watching and caring for Michelle’s well-being, Rilee’s first command of the trip. Michelle was so out of it I am not sure if she noticed the marina we stopped at was an old clam factory (also the nicest one in town)! I was busy trying to figure out the weather. It was so cold outside (29 degrees F) that is started to rain inside the boat when I turned on the heat to warm Michelle up. A couple that was just getting ready to start the loop lent me their pickup truck so I could go to the hardware store and get a dehumidifier, which saved the day!
Next I turned my attention to planning the crossing, which required several difficult days of going to the 4pm happy hour meeting with the other trapped and cold loopers. Everyone was studying the weather, hoping to get to Tarpon Springs soon. I was a good sport and enjoyed the oysters, so many oysters! Joel Craig, a friend from Michigan, happened to be on vacation in Florida, and let me know that if I needed any help crossing the open water of the Gulf he would love to help. I tried in vain to setup something, but the weather refused to cooperate, as well as the car rental company that wanted Michelle to show up in person to be added on the rental car contract.
Waiting on the weather, I spent the next few days exploring all the cool town had to offer including learning about the inventor of refrigeration (his Museum was closed for renovations). The Orman House Historic State Park was only $2 to get a guided tour of the haunted house! I even toured the harbor by dinghy when it warmed up one afternoon. The harbor is filled with oyster, shrimp, and crab boats offloading their catches to the processing buildings. This is the “real Florida” I have heard of.
Unexpectedly, the weather window opens for a crossing. Michelle is still feeling pretty crummy, so thankfully Joel is still on vacation in Florida, and offers to make the crossing after driving six hours to Apalachicola. Two more sailboats have made it to Apalachicola and are leaving on the same morning as us. Joel and I load his things on the boat, and Michelle and Rilee head to Tarpon Springs in Joel’s rental car. We head out towards the bay and negotiate the tricky Government Cut Pass to the Gulf of Mexico, saving four hours of additional travel time.
Once we are in the gulf we are forced to motor for the first several hours, as the wind is light. After 30ish miles the crab pots disappear and we are able to set the auto pilot for Tarpon Springs, while setting the sails as the wind picks up allowing us to motor sail for greater speed as land disappeared to aft. It is hard to describe the clarity of the sky in such a desolate and remote area. There was only two boats on 48 mile radar the whole night. One was a sailboat that had left before us and had no running lights on at all, only visible to our radar. I made lasagna in the oven to warm us up and then we took shifts to navigate through the night.
It did get cold, down to 34 degrees or so, but the full cockpit enclosure kept us fairly warm. In the early morning when I was sleeping, Joel had a dozen dolphins off the bow riding along with us. It was not long after that we first saw land, it was almost sad as this was the end of my first ocean crossing. Twenty six hours after beginning the crossing, we arrive in Tarpon Springs, and Michelle meets us at dock and helps tie us in.
Celebration is in order for another milestone of the trip completed!
We would sit at Turner Marine for about a week, waiting to have our mast put back on and for weather to clear. Now December, we began to see our first southern Christmas celebrations in the form of boat parades! What a fun thing to see! Everyone was having such a great time! We took advantage of the courtesy car, and checked out downtown Mobile and the Battleship USS Alabama. We enjoyed our fellow loopers company, knowing this was the last time we would see many of them. Our friend Todd was headed for warmer weather in Panama, and several other loopers were heading right to southern Florida, also anxious for warmer weather and their families that awaited them.
Mobile Bay is a shallow body of water, so the wind easily kicked the waves up. Finally the weather broke, and we were off, sailing across Mobile Bay. It felt so good to have the sails up again! I had a brief moment of anxiety as I realized we were now in the ocean. That quickly subsided when I saw my first dophin. I have seen dolphins before, but it is truly magical when they swim up next to your boat and play in the wake off of the bow. I felt like a giddy school kid, in awe of their beauty. Chad and I rush up to the bow of the bow of the boat, leaving Rilee to man the autopilot. She was not amused. This was just the beginning of our dolpin experiences, but a memory I will have forever. Luckily Rilee didn’t care to look over the side of the boat, as we are quite sure she would have thought they were sea monsters!
We arrive to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW), and decide to settle in Gulfshores, AL for the night. We decide on Lucy Buffet’s marina (she has a brother named Jimmy). A bit touristy, but we enjoyed the town, and even found Big Beach Brewery, a fun out of the way brewery. We headed out the next morning, and spend the day on the GIWW. Finally crossing into the Florida, we are ready for the warmth that lies ahead. It’s a beautiful day, and we decide to anchor near Fort McRee. Normally crowded on the weekends, it is empty on Monday, and we love it! We explore Sand Island, created by dredging the Pensacola land cut. Rilee has the tiny island to run and sniff and play in the water! Then we see the crabs. They are suddenly everywhere. We yell for Rilee, but she sees them also. Luckily, most dash back into their holes, except one poor crab. He either couldn’t make his hole, or decided to fight to the death. I thought for sure this was ending with a crab claw pinching Rilee’s nose. Instead, Rilee got the best of the poor little crab, and he floated off into the water.
The weather is perfect…finally, this is what we had looked forward to on the trip! We explore the remains of the old Fort McRee the next morning, before heading out to Pensacola. A cold front is moving in, creating wind and waves that will trap us for almost a week. We take advantage and fully explore Pensacola. It is a town full of history and lucky for us, a brewery! We’re there in time to see the Christmas parade, and also to see the town shut down from President Trump’s visit. We get to experience more unseasonably cold weather and even frost on the boat and docks in the morning. Where did our sunshine and warmth go?
The next leg of our journey will not be on the GIWW, but instead we will have to make a short hop out into the ocean. Our mast height is 52 feet, and we recently discovered the Gulf portion of the intercoastal waterway has bridges shorter than this (48 feet). It really came as a surprise, despite all of the planning and reading we have done about the Great Loop. We have to plan our next move more carefully, since once we leave Pensacola, we cannot cross back out of the ocean until Destin, a full day’s trip for us. If weather were to change, we would have two choices: head back to Pensacola, or push on to Destin. We wait for the weather to break, and we have a gorgeous day to make Destin. I had heard how shallow the water could be in Florida, and this was our first real taste of it. It was so shallow going into Destin, I could see the bottom the entire way in. We made it safely inside, and anchor for the night. We watch another Christmas boat parade as we enjoy dinner in the cockpit.
The morning brings another beautiful day, and we leave Destin and head for Panama City. Again, we had to make an ocean passage, but the conditions are fantastic. We arrive at the city marina with plenty of time to explore the old downtown. Different than Panama City Beach, this side of town is sleepier. We spend some time deciding on our next moves. It is now mid-December, and we have begun to look for a place to leave the boat for a trip home to Michigan for Christmas. We had hoped to get further, but the weather was not cooperating, and lack of car rental facilities along the “forgotten coast” helped us decide on Panama City for the stop. We find a nice, secure marina and arrange for a longer term stay.
While preparing for the trip home, we run into to Paal and Betsy, who we met somewhere on the rivers and traveled with for weeks. We are so happy to see them, and we are invited to their beautiful condo on the bay. We’d split ways back in October, and it was such a fun reunion to catch up and swap stories! We also meet several local boaters who keep their boats at the marina. We exchange information so we can be in touch while we are gone, giving us added reassurance about leaving our boat floating in the water, and driving 1,000 miles north.
We load up the rental truck and head north, excited to see family and friends, but also apprehensive about leaving our boat so far away. We make the trip to Michigan in two days, stopping in Franklin, TN on the way. We arrive in freezing weather (seriously, it was -15 degrees F one morning), and spend the next two weeks visiting with family and friends. We had a great visit, though time went by so fast and we didn’t get to see everyone we had hoped to. Sadly, our visit ended with the passing of my aunt, though I am glad we were there to be with our family. It was a tough farewell after the funeral, but we loaded up the truck once again and headed south.