The Adventure Continues

After leaving Navarre Beach, two more days on the water took us to Apalachicola. What a delightful town! We had been in communication with the girls on Louise and they were at the dock to meet us. They had already found a great little restaurant and bar where we joined them for oysters and beer. Being from Michigan, they haven’t quite gotten up their nerve to try the raw oysters yet, but we all enjoyed the fried ones.
Spent two days in A’cola getting a few supplies and checking out the local spots of interest. Found a great local bookstore and stocked up. My knee became increasingly painful, and for a while it looked like we might be heading back to Mobile and driving home to my orthopedist. I was not a happy camper. But after a phone call to my doc and getting his advice, we opted to continue on and just deal with this when we are home for the holidays.
So, with that out of the way, we resumed our plans for crossing the Big Bend with the girls. Charts came out and a course was plotted.
Tuesday, November 27, we filled up with fuel and water and headed for Dog Island, our point of departure for the crossing. As an added treat, we got to spend the afternoon walking a beautiful island beach and witnessed the most gorgeous sunset I think I have ever seen. The girls joined us aboard for dinner and we set our departure time for 1:00 P. M. the following day. All of this was set in order to arrive offshore from Cedar Key in daylight so that we could see well enough to avoid the numerous crab traps that we knew to expect in shallower water.
Wednesday brought a beautiful day, and the forecast indicated 5-10 mph winds, which meant we would be motoring a lot, but we opted to leave as planned. Calm prevailed until some time after dark when the winds picked up and both boats put up sails. The winds increased steadily as did the wave height. Yours truly began to feel a bit queasy, but my Sea Bands kept full-blown seasickness at bay. We were all just glad to be sailing instead of motoring.
Then the dreaded occurred. In 65’ of water, we began to see crab traps! This meant that we would need to stay offshore in really deep water until daylight. The wind was 12-15, and we were holding our course, and I took the wheel so that Johnny could catch a quick nap in the cockpit. Too rough to sleep below. Then the winds increased, gusting above 20 mph from the east, so I had to wake him to reef the sails. At this point, we basically tried to just hold our own and not go too far south beyond our planned course for landfall at Cedar Key. I was actually able to sleep some in the cockpit, and that was the only thing that kept me from crossing the line to becoming really seasick.
I don’t think any four people have ever greeted dawn with more relief. Still a long way from our destination, at least we were not longer held hostage by the dark.
We misread one of the channel markers heading into Cedar Keys and it took us a bit out of the way. The girls hit the course dead on, and sent a text telling us to meet then on shore at the Pickled Pelican. Now tell me, who could refuse that invitation!
As we sat on the restaurant deck enjoying our first real food since leaving Dog Island, we agreed that the crossing tested some of our skills and our endurance, but all in all we made the best choices under the circumstances.
Now, for any seasoned blue water sailors reading this, I realize that a 100-mile crossing is a baby step, and you are probably smiling or laughing at my account. But for us it was a major addition to our resume and we now know that we are ready for even greater distances. Just how much greater, I’m not sure. Still have to think about that one.