18 Hour Gulf Crossing

Here I sit in Marker One Marina in SHORTS! Sorry Nashville buddies but warmth has been found. On Sunday night at around 9pm our friends on the Lauren Grace radioed that the time had come to pull anchor (in the dark much to Fitz’s chagrin) and to head out. With our hearts racing we headed out of Dog Island with its beautiful navy waters and khaki beach through a maze of channel markers and went to the open waters of the Gulf. The nap we were going for earlier in the day??? Did not happen. We were just too pumped. The wind and wave action kept the cruise a challenge for about the first 5 hours. If this was the “calm, perfect conditions” for crossing, I needed to revise my definitions. Fitz and I took 2 hour shifts watching the helm –that is really about all it took too—watching. The Lauren Grace led the way and we just set the Autopilot for the same course and the radar to keep them in line about ¼ to ½ miles in front of us. When I took my first turn, I asked for a tutorial and Fitz just said to not touch anything. The first shift was hard—I would look at the clock and it would be about 3 minutes from the last time I looked. After that the “magical” part came. The seas smoothed out and the almost full moon showed the way. Absolutely no cell service –you kids would go nuts. The only radio station we got was a man ranting about vitamins vs. prescription drugs or a sports guy talking/ranting about how NBC had gone too far interviewing Bode Miller after his Olympic win and causing him to cry. It is time to put an MP3 player or a CD player on the fly bridge. For the next 4 hours we had a wonderful night time cruise then the sun came up (will be one of the few sun rises for this gal). The sun rise was spectacular. The advice is to not get into harbor in the mornings because the sun on the water is blinding and you will not be able to see the crab pots that are in abundance the closer you get to shore. No problem. Around noon we started seeing the dolphin (they must be late risers) and the seagull would come and fly beside us. The water turned to a beautiful aquamarine color. We made it to Marker One around 3:30pm—the 18 hour run was all it was cracked up to be and more. The lost nap was wearing on us both and we didn’t even wipe the salt off the boat—we went to bed.



Diamonds on the water



Don't touch anything!