(I started this e-mail at the airport, and continued it during two flights, and finished it at my desk at home on Sunday morning. Sorry for the extreme length, but when you get tired of reading, just hit delete.....)
Tampa Airport
3:30 PM
Saturday, September 25, 1999
Day 22 final day, leg 1
This will probably be a long e-mail, because I'm going to wrap up the last couple of days, including our Gulf crossing.
Thursday,
We got up early, and got the fuel as planned. There were 2 other boats planning on making the crossing as well. One of the boats was a 100ft Broward traveling from Detroit to FT. Lauderdale, and the captain had two problems. The first one was he had dropped a valve in one of his engines.
(Yes they were Detroits) The second was that on the trip down the owner had died. I'm serious. I talked to the captain (Ollie) for a while, and it was an interesting/sad story. The good news for me was that when we got there, he had two Detroit mechanics on board. I needed someone to set my electronic injectors, because when my valve was fixed the mechanic didn't have the right set-up. So before leaving for the day one of the mechanics came over to set my injectors. It worked out great.
The other captain, (Dan) was on a 58ft Sea Ray and the owner and his wife were on board, and they were headed to Stuart, FL. They were flying! They had left Northern Michigan 10 days earlier, and were going to be in Stuart by Saturday. As we fueled up, I ask Dan to give me a call when he got out in the Gulf to let us know how the waves were. I thought if it was too bad we'd just stay in the harbor. I didn't hear from him, so we headed out. About 10 minutes into our trip Dan called, and said the going was a little slow for him, because there were white caps out there, and 2 to 4 footers. Oh well I thought I'd give it a try.
The distance to the Gulf from the dock was a couple of miles, and the waves were getting bigger the closer we got to the gulf. As soon as we got through the inlet we were rolling with waves hitting us on our port bow, at about 10 o'clock (does that make sense?). We decided to keep going and see how things progressed. It wasn't bad, but you had to hold on at all times, and we had spray from waves hitting us as we sat on the fly bridge.
Note-- (As we got fuel on Friday we talked the captain of "It's a Wonderful Life" that crossed later that night in a 100ft Yacht and he had so many waves breaking over the flybridge that fish actually landed on the bridge.
As he pulled away from the fuel dock, he threw us one!!) The morning crossing was wet, bumpy, and boring. (I found out a few things about my boat. The front windows leaked, but it handled the water just fine) I had set a heading of 134 degrees into the autopilot, and set the plotter to show us our progress toward "C 1". This was a green day marker off of Clearwater Beach, 146 miles away. Looking at the plotter, and watching the miles tick away seemed like forever. There was nothing to do. I didn't touch the steering wheel for almost 10 hours (except to hold on when we hit a big wave).
The weather was fine. Sunny, and about 80, but it was boring. As the day wore on we all said we never needed to make this trip again. (Terry confided in me later that when he looked down and saw that there were 90 miles to go he said to himself "just get me off this boat") Shortly after noon we could see that there were less white caps, and there were also less big rolling waves like there had been. My spirits started to rise, because I could tell we were going to make the crossing, but I began to realize that the fuel gauges were getting lower than I thought they should. Deb could tell that something was wrong, and I made the mistake of telling her what I was concerned about. (Les reminded me later that was a
mistake) If you remember, earlier I only put in 100 gallons of fuel cause,"
why carry all that weight"
.......on the plane now-headed for Chicago, via Atlanta. The plane left 1 hour and 5 minutes late.....hope we don't miss our connection.
...........so anyway here we are in the middle of the Gulf, ("bored out of my skull" according to Terry), and I started to get concerned about our fuel situation. My engine computers have a fuel trip meter on them so I figured out what had used since we left Apalachicola, and found we had used waaaay more fuel that I had planned. Because we were fighting all those waves we had consumed almost 30% more than normal.
At that point I was not concerned about having enough fuel to get there, because I knew I could slow down, and we'd have plenty. My concern was if we had to slow down, the rough ride we were experiencing would get worse. You see we were riding on the tops of some of those waves, not sinking down into the troughs of the waves, where it would be a lot "more rolly". (I know it's not a word, but you get my point). I watched the gauges, and kept calculating the fuel, and I knew we would have to slow down before we got there and make a long trip even longer.
Note--(At this point I should tell you that many, if not most of the people who make this trip make it overnight. They leave about noon and arrive early the next morning. While we were fueling on Friday 2 different boats were doing just that. They told me they would travel about 10 knots, fish along the way, and get there before noon the following day. One was headed for Panama City, the other for Mobile-direct, which is over 350 miles.) Back to the Gulf......good news, the water continued to lay down. There were less and less white caps, and the swells were starting to be flatter. They were also starting to make a turn in direction. What once was on our port bow was starting to be on our port stern. (Our heading was still 134
degrees) Much to Terry's regret, we slowed down. I had too. I felt we had plenty of fuel, but I couldn't chance it. I couldn't wait for this to be over, but better late than......who knows? What this meant was instead of arriving at 5:30, with plenty of light, we would get there at about 7PM, with very little light left, entering a strange harbor. Not my idea of a good thing to do.
At almost exactly 7PM we went by that marker we had been looking for, for almost 11 hours. It was a beautiful sight. Now all we had to do was find our way into the Clearwater Municipal Marina, and our mission was complete.
I mentioned before that Terry likes to work with the charts, and he is good at it. He had scoped out the channel to the marina, and had a good idea of how to get in there. As we were getting close, everyone assumed their docking positions on the boat (GREAT CREW). The problem was Terry was not next to me, and he assumed I knew exactly where I was going. I didn't. The channel went in two directions. Straight, and a hard left. I knew the marina was up on the left, so when I got to the point I could turn left I did so. Bad move. 1-the marina we wanted was straight, and then follows the channel around to the left. 2-the place I turned there was an unmarked shoal and we ran aground. We were stopped. Several times I tried to use the engines but they stalled because they dug into the sand. They other bad thing was it was a full moon, and people told us that it was an unusually low tide now. Great!
We hailed a couple of young kids over in a small boat, and asked them to grab a line off our bow, but they couldn't budge us. I used few choice words, but that didn't help either. Deb had an idea. Put everyone one the front, which would raise the aft, and maybe then the props wouldn't be in the sand. Didn't work. We hit again.
Les had an idea. Use the bow thruster to move the boat sideways. Didn't work. The bow was sitting on the sandbar. (but just barely) Jeanie, and Annie, just looked at me and knew what I was feeling and said "tells us if we can do anything"
I used the VHF, and called Sea Tow, a marine towing company, and they informed me they could be there in 45 to 50 minutes and the cost would be $650 to get us off the sand bar. The other choice was wait for high tide which was starting to come in. "What time will it be high tide?" I asked.
Midnight........ (another few choice words) To add to all of this I had shut off the generator, because I was afraid the fuel would get too low and the pick-up tube for the generator might not get fuel. I did not want to have to try to prime the generator. And while sitting there I had shut off the main engines because there was a chance I could run out. Plus to top it all off, it was getting past my bed time! This was not a good thing.
Terry had an idea. How about we take the dinghy off the back, and load everyone in it. The combined weight of everyone (except me) and the weight of the dinghy might help. "Couldn't hurt", I said, besides we had nothing to do until the high tide floated us off this shoal. I was up for trying anything.
Made the flight, we're on our way to Chicago, but now my computers battery is getting weak..
With Les and I on the boat, and everyone else in the dinghy you could feel the boat float a little easier, and it would shift a little bit in the wind.
I tried to put it in gear a couple more times but killed the engines.
Finally, after about 20 minutes or so just enough tide had come in and the boat shifted a little more. This time when I put it in reverse, the boat jumped, and started backwards, where we had come from, and back into deeper water.
Once back in the main channel, we had to feel our way because it was dark now (about 9PM). I saw a boat up ahead, and followed his lights until we could see the marina. I stopped briefly to get everyone aboard, except Terry, who followed in the dinghy. We found our slip, tied it up, hooked up the water, and the power, and I let out a huge sigh of relief. We had made the Gulf crossing. (Terry got his wish. 3 to 4 foot waves, and a little adversity). We were all safe, and although no one cares if they do it again, we could say we had done it, and always enjoy the memories.
Friday......
Probably one of the most enjoyable days (at least for me) that we have had so far.
The sky was bright blue. The wind calm. We all took a cup of coffee and walked the docks of this beautiful marina. We ate breakfast as we watched all the hustle of people going out on charter boats, that promised they would catch the big one. Les and Ann took a short walk across a pier to the Gulf, which was dead calm.
While I did a little catch up on voice, and e-mails from work, everyone enjoyed the fact that we did not have to blast out, and had some time to just enjoy the morning.
Back at home now...
We still had two things to take all the stress away from yesterday. First, we had to get the engines started, and to the fuel dock without running out of fuel. Second, we had to go out in the Gulf to put the boat up on top of the water to make sure I didn't damage the props while I was trying to get off the shoal last night.
Fuel---no problem. In fact we had about 46 gallons remaining in each 300 gallon tank. It was a good feeling, and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversations with the other captains at the fuel dock. One boat came in on fumes, and another said they had 3 gallons left when they fueled up. (That's the guy headed for Panama City).
The test run to check the props went with the same positive results. No problems. Headquarters was running great (although I do have a few maintainance items to follow up on).
As we made our way from Clearwater to our new slip for the winter, we went outside in the gulf for a while, then inside on the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway). I can't describe what a boating Mecca this. Every size, shape, and model of boat is here. The closer we got to Tierra Verde, the more I felt we had made the right decision. (in keeping the boat here) When we made the turn off the ICW, and into the channel leading to our marina, the feeling was something hard to describe. In Terry's words "I think I have a tear in my eye". At the entrance to the channel is beautiful sand beach, that has the channel on one side and the Gulf on the other.
Along the channel are over a hundred boats of all sizes, but mostly large, and expensive. At the very end of the channel is Tierra Verde Resort and Marina. Good looking marina, with a huge pool, a pool bar, a good restaurant, and an inside bar with games, and Nascar stuff on the wall.
Awesome!
I won't bore you with everything that happened next, just to say we enjoyed the rest of the day, and topped it off with a great meal at the marina restaurant, and on Saturday we cleaned the boat, and prepared it for several weeks alone.
I need to finish this, and so I'll do so with a recap. In no particular order;
* I know it was three weeks, but it seemed like a few days.
* I now know I could do this for a long time.
* I'm glad we made the decision to do this now, verses later in life. It takes a lot of energy, to go at this pace.
* Speaking of pace. I need to allow more time for weather, and maintenance in my next legs. I planned to make too many miles every day.
* I did achieve my goal of not wasting part of this trip worrying about things at work, and I'm really fortunate to have folks that allowed me to do that, but I can't wait to get back involved. The next legs will be shorter.
* I learned a little about myself, and a lot about cruising.
* I felt good about my planning, and realize how important it is to be completely prepared. I look forward to spending many evenings, with charts, and guide books, planning the next legs.
* The more time went on.........the more I looked forward to writing this log.
Thanks for all you're e-mails. The entire crew looked forward to receiving them each day.
A special thanks to all my crew. Along with all the much needed help you gave me, you made the trip very special!
Our next plan is to move the boat to Florida's East Coast, (not sure just where yet) starting December 27th.
So far this is just a "semi-circle". Plenty of cruising yet to come.
I'll keep you posted.........
BK.
Tampa Airport
3:30 PM
Saturday, September 25, 1999
Day 22 final day, leg 1
This will probably be a long e-mail, because I'm going to wrap up the last couple of days, including our Gulf crossing.
Thursday,
We got up early, and got the fuel as planned. There were 2 other boats planning on making the crossing as well. One of the boats was a 100ft Broward traveling from Detroit to FT. Lauderdale, and the captain had two problems. The first one was he had dropped a valve in one of his engines.
(Yes they were Detroits) The second was that on the trip down the owner had died. I'm serious. I talked to the captain (Ollie) for a while, and it was an interesting/sad story. The good news for me was that when we got there, he had two Detroit mechanics on board. I needed someone to set my electronic injectors, because when my valve was fixed the mechanic didn't have the right set-up. So before leaving for the day one of the mechanics came over to set my injectors. It worked out great.
The other captain, (Dan) was on a 58ft Sea Ray and the owner and his wife were on board, and they were headed to Stuart, FL. They were flying! They had left Northern Michigan 10 days earlier, and were going to be in Stuart by Saturday. As we fueled up, I ask Dan to give me a call when he got out in the Gulf to let us know how the waves were. I thought if it was too bad we'd just stay in the harbor. I didn't hear from him, so we headed out. About 10 minutes into our trip Dan called, and said the going was a little slow for him, because there were white caps out there, and 2 to 4 footers. Oh well I thought I'd give it a try.
The distance to the Gulf from the dock was a couple of miles, and the waves were getting bigger the closer we got to the gulf. As soon as we got through the inlet we were rolling with waves hitting us on our port bow, at about 10 o'clock (does that make sense?). We decided to keep going and see how things progressed. It wasn't bad, but you had to hold on at all times, and we had spray from waves hitting us as we sat on the fly bridge.
Note-- (As we got fuel on Friday we talked the captain of "It's a Wonderful Life" that crossed later that night in a 100ft Yacht and he had so many waves breaking over the flybridge that fish actually landed on the bridge.
As he pulled away from the fuel dock, he threw us one!!) The morning crossing was wet, bumpy, and boring. (I found out a few things about my boat. The front windows leaked, but it handled the water just fine) I had set a heading of 134 degrees into the autopilot, and set the plotter to show us our progress toward "C 1". This was a green day marker off of Clearwater Beach, 146 miles away. Looking at the plotter, and watching the miles tick away seemed like forever. There was nothing to do. I didn't touch the steering wheel for almost 10 hours (except to hold on when we hit a big wave).
The weather was fine. Sunny, and about 80, but it was boring. As the day wore on we all said we never needed to make this trip again. (Terry confided in me later that when he looked down and saw that there were 90 miles to go he said to himself "just get me off this boat") Shortly after noon we could see that there were less white caps, and there were also less big rolling waves like there had been. My spirits started to rise, because I could tell we were going to make the crossing, but I began to realize that the fuel gauges were getting lower than I thought they should. Deb could tell that something was wrong, and I made the mistake of telling her what I was concerned about. (Les reminded me later that was a
mistake) If you remember, earlier I only put in 100 gallons of fuel cause,"
why carry all that weight"
.......on the plane now-headed for Chicago, via Atlanta. The plane left 1 hour and 5 minutes late.....hope we don't miss our connection.
...........so anyway here we are in the middle of the Gulf, ("bored out of my skull" according to Terry), and I started to get concerned about our fuel situation. My engine computers have a fuel trip meter on them so I figured out what had used since we left Apalachicola, and found we had used waaaay more fuel that I had planned. Because we were fighting all those waves we had consumed almost 30% more than normal.
At that point I was not concerned about having enough fuel to get there, because I knew I could slow down, and we'd have plenty. My concern was if we had to slow down, the rough ride we were experiencing would get worse. You see we were riding on the tops of some of those waves, not sinking down into the troughs of the waves, where it would be a lot "more rolly". (I know it's not a word, but you get my point). I watched the gauges, and kept calculating the fuel, and I knew we would have to slow down before we got there and make a long trip even longer.
Note--(At this point I should tell you that many, if not most of the people who make this trip make it overnight. They leave about noon and arrive early the next morning. While we were fueling on Friday 2 different boats were doing just that. They told me they would travel about 10 knots, fish along the way, and get there before noon the following day. One was headed for Panama City, the other for Mobile-direct, which is over 350 miles.) Back to the Gulf......good news, the water continued to lay down. There were less and less white caps, and the swells were starting to be flatter. They were also starting to make a turn in direction. What once was on our port bow was starting to be on our port stern. (Our heading was still 134
degrees) Much to Terry's regret, we slowed down. I had too. I felt we had plenty of fuel, but I couldn't chance it. I couldn't wait for this to be over, but better late than......who knows? What this meant was instead of arriving at 5:30, with plenty of light, we would get there at about 7PM, with very little light left, entering a strange harbor. Not my idea of a good thing to do.
At almost exactly 7PM we went by that marker we had been looking for, for almost 11 hours. It was a beautiful sight. Now all we had to do was find our way into the Clearwater Municipal Marina, and our mission was complete.
I mentioned before that Terry likes to work with the charts, and he is good at it. He had scoped out the channel to the marina, and had a good idea of how to get in there. As we were getting close, everyone assumed their docking positions on the boat (GREAT CREW). The problem was Terry was not next to me, and he assumed I knew exactly where I was going. I didn't. The channel went in two directions. Straight, and a hard left. I knew the marina was up on the left, so when I got to the point I could turn left I did so. Bad move. 1-the marina we wanted was straight, and then follows the channel around to the left. 2-the place I turned there was an unmarked shoal and we ran aground. We were stopped. Several times I tried to use the engines but they stalled because they dug into the sand. They other bad thing was it was a full moon, and people told us that it was an unusually low tide now. Great!
We hailed a couple of young kids over in a small boat, and asked them to grab a line off our bow, but they couldn't budge us. I used few choice words, but that didn't help either. Deb had an idea. Put everyone one the front, which would raise the aft, and maybe then the props wouldn't be in the sand. Didn't work. We hit again.
Les had an idea. Use the bow thruster to move the boat sideways. Didn't work. The bow was sitting on the sandbar. (but just barely) Jeanie, and Annie, just looked at me and knew what I was feeling and said "tells us if we can do anything"
I used the VHF, and called Sea Tow, a marine towing company, and they informed me they could be there in 45 to 50 minutes and the cost would be $650 to get us off the sand bar. The other choice was wait for high tide which was starting to come in. "What time will it be high tide?" I asked.
Midnight........ (another few choice words) To add to all of this I had shut off the generator, because I was afraid the fuel would get too low and the pick-up tube for the generator might not get fuel. I did not want to have to try to prime the generator. And while sitting there I had shut off the main engines because there was a chance I could run out. Plus to top it all off, it was getting past my bed time! This was not a good thing.
Terry had an idea. How about we take the dinghy off the back, and load everyone in it. The combined weight of everyone (except me) and the weight of the dinghy might help. "Couldn't hurt", I said, besides we had nothing to do until the high tide floated us off this shoal. I was up for trying anything.
Made the flight, we're on our way to Chicago, but now my computers battery is getting weak..
With Les and I on the boat, and everyone else in the dinghy you could feel the boat float a little easier, and it would shift a little bit in the wind.
I tried to put it in gear a couple more times but killed the engines.
Finally, after about 20 minutes or so just enough tide had come in and the boat shifted a little more. This time when I put it in reverse, the boat jumped, and started backwards, where we had come from, and back into deeper water.
Once back in the main channel, we had to feel our way because it was dark now (about 9PM). I saw a boat up ahead, and followed his lights until we could see the marina. I stopped briefly to get everyone aboard, except Terry, who followed in the dinghy. We found our slip, tied it up, hooked up the water, and the power, and I let out a huge sigh of relief. We had made the Gulf crossing. (Terry got his wish. 3 to 4 foot waves, and a little adversity). We were all safe, and although no one cares if they do it again, we could say we had done it, and always enjoy the memories.
Friday......
Probably one of the most enjoyable days (at least for me) that we have had so far.
The sky was bright blue. The wind calm. We all took a cup of coffee and walked the docks of this beautiful marina. We ate breakfast as we watched all the hustle of people going out on charter boats, that promised they would catch the big one. Les and Ann took a short walk across a pier to the Gulf, which was dead calm.
While I did a little catch up on voice, and e-mails from work, everyone enjoyed the fact that we did not have to blast out, and had some time to just enjoy the morning.
Back at home now...
We still had two things to take all the stress away from yesterday. First, we had to get the engines started, and to the fuel dock without running out of fuel. Second, we had to go out in the Gulf to put the boat up on top of the water to make sure I didn't damage the props while I was trying to get off the shoal last night.
Fuel---no problem. In fact we had about 46 gallons remaining in each 300 gallon tank. It was a good feeling, and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversations with the other captains at the fuel dock. One boat came in on fumes, and another said they had 3 gallons left when they fueled up. (That's the guy headed for Panama City).
The test run to check the props went with the same positive results. No problems. Headquarters was running great (although I do have a few maintainance items to follow up on).
As we made our way from Clearwater to our new slip for the winter, we went outside in the gulf for a while, then inside on the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway). I can't describe what a boating Mecca this. Every size, shape, and model of boat is here. The closer we got to Tierra Verde, the more I felt we had made the right decision. (in keeping the boat here) When we made the turn off the ICW, and into the channel leading to our marina, the feeling was something hard to describe. In Terry's words "I think I have a tear in my eye". At the entrance to the channel is beautiful sand beach, that has the channel on one side and the Gulf on the other.
Along the channel are over a hundred boats of all sizes, but mostly large, and expensive. At the very end of the channel is Tierra Verde Resort and Marina. Good looking marina, with a huge pool, a pool bar, a good restaurant, and an inside bar with games, and Nascar stuff on the wall.
Awesome!
I won't bore you with everything that happened next, just to say we enjoyed the rest of the day, and topped it off with a great meal at the marina restaurant, and on Saturday we cleaned the boat, and prepared it for several weeks alone.
I need to finish this, and so I'll do so with a recap. In no particular order;
* I know it was three weeks, but it seemed like a few days.
* I now know I could do this for a long time.
* I'm glad we made the decision to do this now, verses later in life. It takes a lot of energy, to go at this pace.
* Speaking of pace. I need to allow more time for weather, and maintenance in my next legs. I planned to make too many miles every day.
* I did achieve my goal of not wasting part of this trip worrying about things at work, and I'm really fortunate to have folks that allowed me to do that, but I can't wait to get back involved. The next legs will be shorter.
* I learned a little about myself, and a lot about cruising.
* I felt good about my planning, and realize how important it is to be completely prepared. I look forward to spending many evenings, with charts, and guide books, planning the next legs.
* The more time went on.........the more I looked forward to writing this log.
Thanks for all you're e-mails. The entire crew looked forward to receiving them each day.
A special thanks to all my crew. Along with all the much needed help you gave me, you made the trip very special!
Our next plan is to move the boat to Florida's East Coast, (not sure just where yet) starting December 27th.
So far this is just a "semi-circle". Plenty of cruising yet to come.
I'll keep you posted.........
BK.
