We Made it This Far

We decided that if we were going to cross the Gulf, Wednesday was the day to do it. We fueled up and headed away from Tarpon Springs around 11:30 A.M. When we got to the open water, the waves were 2 to 4 feet high. We were rocking and rolling. The weather was overcast and 85 degrees. As the night went on, the seas calmed and ended up being 1 to 2 feet waves. Once it was dark, the fog rolled in. It was so foggy, we could hardly see Norm's light on his boat right in front of us. Thank God for radar. We only saw a total of three boats on the radar, and two of those were when we were approaching the more shallow water at Carabelle.

During the course of the night, we had a mullet "fly" onto our boat. By the time we found it, it was dead. We also had a bird trying to stand on our spotlight while we were in the middle of the Gulf. He would fly to Norm's boat and land for awhile and then come to our boat and try to perch on the spotlight. He would slide off and go back to Norm's boat. I can't imagine how tired his little wings must have been.

We decided to keep going to Appalachicola before stopping to sleep. (We tried to take turns sleeping while the other one drove through the night, but neither one of us got much sleep that way.) We ended up at the Appalachicola Municipal Dock arriving at 10:45 A.M. This dock is nice and according to our cruising guide, it's $20 a night. Not bad. We are glad to be able to rest and get ready for tomorrow's cruise. So far, the oil spill has not reached the areas we are cruising. Hopefully, it will stay that way.