Gulf of Mexico Crossing

December 3-4, 2010 Crossing the Gulf of Mexico from Carrabelle Florida to Clearwater Florida. The weather window to cross the gulf was now, once we start, we were committed to go. The wind was down, the water had laid down and the weather window was short. We had to go or wait another 6-10 days for the opportunity for another good window. Four boats had decided to make this crossing, Dream Fever, High Spirits, The Old Grouch, and Kim Jo III. We had our early morning briefing from Buddy, the local guru for the crossing, and the time was set to go at 11 am. The crossing is normally 18-20 hours depending on how fast you travel. This would mean that someone had to be at the helm the entire 18-20 hours. You can not get within 20-30 miles of Clearwater before daylight, because of the possibility of getting a crab pot wrapped around your shaft and props. That had happened to another boat and it snapped off their prop and shaft, so the timing of the arrival is important. The plan was to leave Carrabelle early to get as much distance between us and the cold front that was coming and then slow down once we got nearer to Clearwater. As we traveled, the weather was great, once the sun went down, you were constantly on watch for other boats, so we monitored the VHF and the radar, always watching the position of your companians and other boats merging to the same point. We had dolphins traveling with us, which is now becoming a common site. It is really dark on the Gulf at night and the stars are beautiful. Next morning as the sun begun to come up High Spirits was ahead of us and Ruth was calling out the locations of the crab pots, they were so hard to see with the sun in your eyes. We finally arrived at 9 am Saturday morning to a host of friends, Richard and Jill of Finally and Tom and Linda of Q's end. Our crossing was a total of 22 hours, because of our early arrival and had to motor around until daylight. Total distance was 191 miles. They helped us tie up, we rested and refreshed ourselves and went walking in the park and saw the large inflatable movie screen for the movie that night in the park. We then went to dinner at the Palms with Ruth and Wayne. Returned to the boat and CRASHED.