The Crossing
"The Crossing" is what anybody cruising from New Orleans, LA or Mobile, AL needs to do in order to get to Tampa Bay - the gateway to southern Florida. The crossing is how boaters negotiate the "Big Bend" of Florida and involves cutting straight across 150 miles of open water from Dog Island to N Anclote Island. Boaters are forced to crossing because there is the the gap Intercoastal Waterway that forces any boat out into the Gulf of Mexico. During the crossing a vessel is 40 - 50 miles from shore for about 10 hours. For obvious reasons, the crossing becomes a focus of cruising boats on this journey. Moving along the protected Intercoastal offers a multitude of options for stopping, finding a marina or at anchor in realative security. Starting the crossing has none of those exit strategies. Once you start, you are committed to the open ocean. If it gets rough, you're only option is to press on - or retreat.
Navigating in the any ocean crossing is also significantly different than navigating in the Intercoastal. Along the Intercoastal there are channel markers every so often forming a string that a cruiser follows - like connecting the dots. Usually those markers are within sight of each other. Leaving Dog Island passing that last marker means the next marker at N Anclote Island is164 miles away. Your chartplotter gives you a route to follow as you are on that stretch, but there are no other visuals other than the sky and the water - except the occasional other vessel.
The helmsman's duty is to not hit anything - and not be hit by anything - while staying on the route. With an auto pilot (a computers attached to the chart plotter and the rudder that will keep the boat on its course) that job is simplifed greatly. Navigator stayed on the auto pilot something like 95% of the time. But there are still a miriad of things to pay attention to. Chief of which are other boats which may appear as distant lights, or show up as a blip on radar - or as AIS icons on the chart plotter. To complicate interpreting and tracking those objects, those indicators may appear and disappear as your boat - and their boat - bounce up and down, roll back and forth, speed up or slow down.
We expected our crossing to take 22 to 24 hours which automatically means an overnight voyage. Being on the water at night is a very different experience and can be disorienting. Keeping the boat running through the night requires taking shifts and grabbing cat naps adding to the difficulty. We were fortunate to have Otto C. - a veteran of many crossings - join us for our crossing which meant that we could have two people awake at all times.
The next difficulty was finding a weather window to do the crossing in. Ideally, we were looking for wind less than 12 mph - for the duration; waves less than 2 ft. - for the duration; and wave period greater than 2 times the wave height - for the duration. The Americas Great Loop Cruising Association (AGLCA) provides daily forecasts - and any skipper has to make his/her own call using a wealth of other wind, weather and wave information. I started following the AGLCA forecasts in November. From November 11th to January 11th the AGLCA forecast only 9 "Go" days! We were faced with a lot of potential waiting.
As we repaired the bow thruster in Panama City I was watching a potential weather window which would mean departing Apalachicola the afternoon of January 12th. On the morning of the 11th, it still looked promising so after talking with our brain trust (Bill W.) and determining that Otto could be in position to join us, Liz and I left Panama City with a 60 mile day along the Intercoastal reaching Apalachicola at the last light on the night of the 11th.
We were up early the morning of the 12th preparing the boat. Engine check; bilge check; navigation light check; rig the static line; stow all loose gear; clean the pilothouse windows; etc. At 11 am Otto and his brother Rob showed up (Rob would drive Otto's truck and meet us at the other end). Rob and Liz made a quick run to Piggly Wiggly (local grocery chain) while I brought Otto up to speed. Last chance to consider the data.
We knew the window was not ideal. Wind speeds were forecast to creep up to 15 knots from midnite to 6 am. But wave height was forecast to be 1.8 ft or less with a period of over 4 seconds for most of the duration, but shortening to less than 3.5 for the last 6 hours or so. Cloud cover but no rain forecast - and a day shy of a full moon offering decent illumination. It seemed to all of us to be acceptable.
An hour after Otto arrived we were underway. We had about 25 miles running inside St George Island and at 4 pm we passd through the cut between St George and Dog Island - out into the open Gulf.
The first half of the offshore portion was uneventful. Waves less than 1 1/2 ft and wind less than 10 mph. Liz cooked a wonderful dinner about 6:30 pm. After midnight the wind picked up as forecast. At first it was on our port beam but it slowly veered and by 4 am it was right on our bow. And it kept increasing. By 4 am it was probably more like 17 to 20 mph. And given a fetch exceeding 45 miles waves slowly built - certainly cresting over 4 ft by 4 am. We were taking spray over the bow regularly and with the biggest waves (which seemed to come in sets of three) the bow was lifting up, plunging, lifting back up, plunging then lifting up again.
Navigator handled it all brilliantly. Even in the biggest waves the auto pilot kept us on course and the engine maintained a steady 8.75 to 9.25 mph. As Liz said after, she never was in fear of how the boat was handling it. Uncomfortable, yes, but nothing to worry about. Otto and Jon rotated shifts driving the boat, then napping, and Liz kept us awake. The only real excitement was when we passed a boat that was heading the opposite direction. We heard them on the radio, saw them on AIS but never even saw their lights as they passed a few miles away.
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