Dunedin FL, December 1-14

As I said in earlier posts Marker 1 Marina is where Jill won a free 2 week stay and we sure made the most of it!! It took us a couple of days to recover from our crossing. I guess we don't do all nighters like we used to. Dunedin is a very nice little town with a great bike trail that goes from Tarpon Springs to the north all the way to Clearwater in the south. We rented a car the first weekend to cover some more ground and get some larger items that we needed. It was time for an oil change and 15 gallons is a bit much on a bike. We also changed out the other engine battery...I guess we should have done both back at Aqua Yacht (thanks Tex).

One of our stops was in Tarpon Springs which was a big Greek sponging town back in the day. Today they still do some sponging but it is really a touristy kind of town with some great Greek food. I remember going there as a kid and it doesn't seemed to have changed much.

  

 While we had the car we went south to Bradenton Beach to meet up with our friends Vickie and Bryan who were down here visiting relatives. You may remember them from our Nashville trip this past summer. This was our first visit with friends from "back home" since we started the trip. I'm sure there will be more when we hit the keys. Of course we were able to find a dive bar during our visit.

While in Dunedin we were also paid a visit by Jill's cousin Larry and his wife Marge who live in Lakeland FL. It was nice to catch up since we hadn't seen them in several years.

The first Saturday we were here they had their lighted boat parade. There were some pretty impressive entry's. Some of the boats had more lights than the houses around here.

We also to advantage of the car to run over to Tampa and spend an afternoon in Ybor City. This is the home to the old cigar industry section of Tampa and has several nice restaurants and cigar shops. One sign really caught my attention....a couple of these and I'm ready for another gulf crossing!

It was very nice to be in one place for awhile and really relax but after 2 weeks it was time to get moving again. We are now in Punta Gorda on a mooring ball for a few days before heading through Pine Island Sound toward Marco Island and eventually Marathon where we will stay for 2 months. A strong cold front came through last night (only 73 today) and the winds are going to be pretty strong till Monday so we'll just have to rough it out here....shucks. We'll update on the trip from Dunedin south when we have better wifi.

If we don't post before we'd like to wish all of our friends, family and followers a Merry Christmas!!

On the midnight watch I realized.....

.....That ocean forecasters get their training as weathermen in the Midwest. To say the forecast was off a bit would be an understatement. They had been calling for waves less than 2 feet and winds light and variable to last for the next 36-48 hours. We faced several periods where waves were 2-4 for a few hours. I'm sure there was a 6 footer in there every once in a while just to keep us on our toes.

We were joined in Port St. Joe by friends on our sister ship "The Mist" who would make the crossing with us. It was nice to have another boat to travel with and check in on the radio every hour or so. It was "fun" to look back at them as they were crashing through the waves and know that's what we looked like.

Chasing 80 & The Mist

Port St. Joe Lighthouse

We left Port St. Joe at 11:00 Monday morning in the best weather we would see for the next 24 hours. Out of St. Joe Bay we ran south along the barrier island toward Cape San Blas. The shoals at the Cape extend out a few miles and once we cleared those we turned southeast and I engaged the autopilot for the waypoint I had set just off Anclote Key just outside Tarpon Springs. We wouldn't touch the controls again for the next 18 hours (other than to hold onto the wheel for dear life!!). As we made the turn the seas started to build, thankfully on our nose the whole way Jill had taken a movie when we were in the gulf from Panama City to Port St. Joe. Conditions were similar to start but continued to build heading toward sunset.

About sunset conditions were at the worst they would be for the whole trip. Jill had done a great job of securing things inside the boat but we were a bit lax when it came to things on the fly-bridge. I made the mistake of believing the forecast. The sea took on a pattern of 4-6 hard slams on the nose with a period of 20-30 seconds of relative calm before repeating. Thankfully I had locked the door on the mini fridge but it did slide around quite a bit. It took a couple of days before I had the nerve to open it again! It was a real challenge to keep holding on to things while trying to move about. At one point my Tervis cup was sitting on the fridge and I happened to look over just as it levitated about a foot up and then moved 3 feet back and down through the open hatchway to the Saloon below. Luckily it landed mostly on the drain grate by the door so it didn't make too big of a mess.

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse the sun went down... it gets really DARK out there when that happens!! I guess it happens every night. About 9:00 I began to notice that the slams were coming in 2-4's with a longer calm period....could it be getting better? I promised Jill that when the moon came up at 10:30 it would calm things down even more. I don't think she believed me but went down to get some "rest" on the futon anyway. Actually things did calm down even more and there was a much appreciated moon rise. The waves are easier to take when you can see them coming.

On our midnight radio check with The Mist I made the mistake of telling Bill "I think we have this licked"...DOH! Jill came up to relieve me about 2:00 and I hit the futon for some shuteye. Well, that lasted all the way till 3:00 when I realized we were doing the hobby-horse again. Things weren't as uncomfortable as earlier but still too much to sleep through. About 3:30 I came back to the bridge and told Jill to try and get some more rest. Things calmed down again by 5:00 and by 5:30 I began to see the first signs of sunrise. Jill took back over and I was able to crash for a couple of hours. She shot a pretty cool video just before sunrise.

All in all we only had probably 6-7 hours of really snotty seas during the whole 26 hour trip but that seems to be what you remember most. It's been a week since we started and it doesn't seem as bad now...

Welcome sight

 It was good to get that part of the trip behind us and now we can look forward to leisurely making our way down the gulf coast of Florida. The trip was never dangerous and the boat performed flawlessly. A quick check of things once we were secure revealed a few loose screws (on the boat!) and a bent stand-off arm on the dinghy. If you zoom in on the picture below the arm in the foreground is supposed to be straight like the one in the background.

We got the boat and ourselves cleaned up and headed out to an early dinner. I was in bed at 7 pm and got a solid 13 hours of sleep!

Celebration Margarita's

We are now at Marker 1 Marina in Dunedin where Jill had won a free 2 week stay. We have been enjoying the area for the past week but I'll save that for another post. We may get moving late week to head south, stay tuned.

First sunset at Marker 1