Thursday, Thanksgiving Day
Miles Traveled 0
Total Miles Traveled 1418
Day 78
Happy Thanksgiving!
We are still at Panama City and spent the morning putting together a
rough plan for the next couple of weeks.
We hear through our daily AGLCA digest that there are about 25 looper boats waiting for a weather window to cross the Gulf of Mexico from Carrabelle to
Tarpon Springs or Clearwater Florida.
There are no barrier islands between Carrabelle Florida
and Tarpon Springs which is 175 miles, most loopers make the trip all at once
and at trawler speed that takes about 22 hours….nonstop. The option we are considering will take 3
days of good weather to go from Carrabelle to Steinhatchee, to Crystal River,
to Tarpon Springs. This route will
require cruising 10 hour days for three days.
The problem with this route is the Gulf of Mexico is very shallow, even
at 15-20 miles from shore. The nautical
chart water depths are based on lunar tides, but there is a winter phenomenon
that happens when the wind blows from the north, northeast that causes the
water level to be lower than the chart depths at low tide. We are currently in the winter season and the
wind has been blowing from the north, northeast for a couple of weeks. We will
leave Panama City Saturday morning and have two stops before arriving at
Carrabelle. We will make our decision of
what course to follow when we stay at Carrabelle.
Today we joined 14 other loopers for Thanksgiving dinner
at a local restaurant and guess who shows up before the dinner bell rings…”Firebird”. We have had a lot of good times with Joe on
this adventure, and we're glad to see him catch up with us from Pensacola.
After dinner we had docktails at sunset.
No comments:
Post a Comment