The Gulf Crossing that Almost Wasn't

We had a very rough start to our long over due crossing of the Gulf.  The weather has been so bad all week.  We were finally geared up and ready to get the crossing over.  The forecast was very "iffy" all week, but it looked like Saturday was going to "doable" for us to cross.  The forecast was for seas 3 to 4 feet.

We were up early and wanted to get going at first light.  We had to wait to get enough light to see as it was extremely overcast on Saturday morning.  Finally at 7:07am we untied the lines and headed off down the ICW.  We were heading to East Pass since the locals all said that Government Cut was too shoaled in to take a boat with a 5 foot draft out.

We started down the ICW, but didn't get far.  About two miles from Apalachicola, there was a red buoy off station.  I slowed the boat down as I knew things didn't look right.  We proceeded with caution.  I always say to navigate with your eyes and not the chartplotter.  I figured if Government Cut was shoaling that the ICW was likely to be shoaled in as well and that the marker was moved to indicate deep water.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  We slowly ran up on a sand bar.

The good news was that we were at idle speed.  The bad news was that both BoatUS and SeaTow were 2 hours away.  Add to that the tide was going out and that high tide was not until 4:00pm.  Now we weren't sure if we would even get to cross the Gulf.

The tow boat showed up at 9:30 but he was not optimistic he could get us off.  He tied up the boat and gave it a tug and sure enough we got off the bar and back into deep water.  After checking all the systems, we were back on our way.  No vibration, no harm, no foul.  We were very lucky.

At 10:30 we went out East Pass and set our waypoint for Clearwater.  The seas were a bit lumpy.  They were solid 3 to 4 feet.  Gail got a little bit ill when she went down to make a sandwich for lunch.  But she hung in there and did fine the rest of the trip.

We pulled into the marina at 5:30 pm.  We were exhausted, but glad we had it over with.  It took us a solid hour to top off the fuel and then get into our slip and tied up.  All we did was run out quick to get a bit to eat and then headed back to the boat for bed.  We knew we had another long day tomorrow.