The Best Gulf Crossing ever 28◦02'.964 N 082◦47'.242 W

We are snug as a bug in a rug in Dunedin Florida. We started our day yesterday Nov 29^th with a lovely 2hr walk on the beach just after sunrise. And yes we tied the dinghy this time!

There is a lovely piece of property for sale on the island if anyone is interested?

Property for sale on Dog island 

There are many jelly fish that got washed up on shore and got stuck. Poor little guys!

                        

  

On the Gulf side of the island we saw a boat wreck, so we prayed that a) nobody was hurt in it and b) that that was not our fate on this crossing.

 

As it turned out, we had a wonderful crossing with our companion boats. There were many of us doing the crossing last night. Some said as many as 25. I saw a total of 12 during the night but some were faster or left earlier.  We were accompanied by "Ta Ta", "Sea Horse",  "Mara Beel" and "Serenity". Once the sun set and twilight was over; which was 6:30pm; we started checking in with each other every 30min on the top and bottom of the hour. This was to ensure that everyone was well and to make sure everyone was awake! 24 hrs and 26 min after starting the engines, we got to turn them off as we docked. 

Once we left land behind us; we had nothing but water in front of us until 9:47 this morning when we finally saw land again. Although we started out a little rougher than anticipated, we saw 1 to 2 foot waves most of the night and all of these from the front and just off to the left a bit, so it was really easy to take. I guess we really did not need to tie down all the furniture and tape shut all the drawers.

Sunset on the Gulf of Mexico 

We laid a course on the GPS that had us slowly moving away from the other boats. Once we got about 1/4 mile away from them, I got a call on the VHF from 2 of them making sure everything was OK and double checking our course and speed against theirs. Sure did make me feel safe and looked after.

Jim and I took turns navigating and napping in 3hrs blocs. So I had the first shift from 6 to 9 pm, then Jim took over from 9 to midnight etc... By 6 am the sun was rising again and although it was Jim's turn to nap, he barely laid down for an hour before getting up again.

Sun rise on the Gulf of Mexico 

It is beautiful weather here now. A high of 78◦F and Sunny. To top off this wonderful crossing and beautiful day, we got a message from Jeff and Susan; who were already in Dunedin. They said we would all be too tired to cook and needed to rest, so they hosted a celebratory dinner for us after we had a brief nap. John and Mark brought Champagne to toast our arrival. How lucky can we get?

Popping the corks on the Champagne 

 

Left to right: Dan,&Angie, Mimi& Jim,Roger& Mary, John and his wife,  Becky & Mark, Jean and Hubby 

Dog Island staging area 29◦46'.951N 084◦39'.570W

We had a  wonderfully short day and arrived at our anchorage by noon. There was no one here when we arrived but there are now 9 boats in this area and another 18 boats or so in nearby Carrabelle. We will all be leaving for the gulf crossing tomorrow. Some people have been here for weeks waiting for a good time to cross

We chose to stay anchored at Dog island instead of going to Carrabell because it puts us about 10 miles closer to the Gulf and the weather calls for calm night tonight. When you are looking at the picture above; look closely in the middle from top to bottom and just slightly to the right is Perfect Balance at anchorage in Apalachee Bay, the water on the other side of the island is the Gulf of Mexico.

Since we are waiting for tomorrow afternoon to start our crossing of the Gulf we will go explore the island a little more. We went for a quick walkabout today, but we did not bring our dinghy in far enough. When we went back to get on it; it was floating away about 50 feet from shore. Thank god we met up with Roger and Mary from "Ta Ta" as Roger very gracefully offered to go get it for us and save Jim the swim.  After he rescued our dinghy, they invited us over for docktails on their boat.

 We left them just as the sun was setting over Dog Island. Good Night all 

Bottom scrapping mud sucking day 29◦27'.545 N 085◦03'.152 W

A beautiful day in the GIWW. That stands for the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway. I just found out today that this is the official name of the ICW so I stand corrected. Either way the sun was shining and the dolphins where swimming all around us for most of the day.

Captain Jim was at the helm most of the day and as you can tell, he is really enjoying his new chair.

Our trajectory today was relatively narrow and shallow. We saw a few boats that apparently had a bad day.

                             

 

When I saw this second one Nella, I thought of you immediately!  

Since we will not see a weather window until Saturday, we decided to slow it down a bit and stop in Apalachicola. This being Thanksgiving in the states, we tried calling the city Marina but only got an answering machine. We went to the dock only to find that the water level was too low for our boat. We stopped dead, just like when I hit bottom, but at least this time it was Jim; not me; at the helm. Unfortunately, the bottom is mud which just sucked our keel right in.

so much so that we ended up leaning to one side before Jim got enough power to get us out of it. 

We turned around and ran 5 miles back up the river to find an anchorage. Oddly enough, our issue here was that Saul Creek is too deep, with depths of 30-40 feet most of the way. We found a stretch that was only 16 feet deep, so we dropped our hook here. It was obvious to us that this was a good place, since we found 4 other boats in the creek as well.

We ended up having docktails with Bert and Stel on "Estralita"

Tomorrow we will head on to Carrabelle which is about 25 miles up the river. Happy Thanksgiving to all our US friends. We are thankful for each and every one of you.   

Sunrise/Sunset 30◦07'.177N 085◦35'.809W Happy Anniversary Marie-Anne and Dan

Well we have had a long but wonderful sailing day. The sun was shining, the birds where swimming and the engines purred like kittens. We received word that there may be a crossing on Friday, so we ran 80 miles today. We need to do 90 miles tomorrow to make it to Carrabelle in time for Friday's potential crossing.

I did get a picture of one of the islands separating the ICW from the Gulf of Mexico. Strange to think that this small bit of land prevents so much awful sailing. 

Obviously I  figured out how to use the video camera to take still pictures and more importantly; I figured out how to download these pictures from the camera to the computer. So tonight for your viewing pleasure I have a sunrise picture from Navarre Cove and a sunset picture from Pitts Bayou which is where we are this evening. The boat in the sunrise picture is "Pimaro" the sail boat we ran with for the last couple of days. Unfortunately we parted ways with Germain and Chantal today, as they needed to stop for parts in Fort Walton and we needed to get going a little faster to make our destination.  

Happy Anniversary Marie-Anne and Danny. Hope you all had as wonderful a day as we did  Nighty night all. 

Officially Florida 30◦24'.315N 80◦49'.138W

So we are officially in Florida, however it is very Northern Florida and it is cold as Canada...well maybe not quite that cold, but it is cold here. Currently it is about 10◦C outside. We are anchored in the ICW at Navarre Cove. The ICW stands for the Intercoastal Waterway. This is a waterway between the Gulf of Mexico and the continental US. We are following this coast line as we round the Gulf in order to shorten our trip across the big Gulf.

So last night I promised you pictures of Pirate's Cove however two things conspired against us to prevent us from taking the pictures. The first is that our camera is broken. Not sure what the issue is, but my trusty Cannon has bit the dust and my lens will no longer come out and play. Once we get to southern Florida I will take it into a shop to see if it can be repaired. The second issue is that as we were passing by Pirate's Cove, I happened to drive the boat onto a sandbar while Jim was weighing the anchor.

He was standing on the bow washing the mud off the anchor before lifting it onto the boat, I was driving through the very narrow channel out of Robert's Bayou when the boat suddenly stopped dead. Fortunately I was going really slow so I did not knock Jim off the bow. No damage to the boat and putting the engines in reverse got us off the sandbar in a hurry. Shortly thereafter Jim advised me to drive straight across the bay, but the channel curved to the left rather quickly. Fortunately we found the right path before I drove the boat aground again. Twice in one day would have been amusing though!

Anyway, no pics for tonight, due to rain, broken camera and sandbars. You will just have to use your imagination. Tomorrow, hopefully I will figure out how to use the camcorder for picture taking and I will stay off the sandbars.

We received an e-mail from a friend advising that there is likely a weather window to cross the Gulf on Friday, so we will push hard for the next two days to try to make it to Carrabelle' where we planned on staging our crossing from.

Night all. 

We're outa hear 30◦19.447N 087◦32'.013W

Thanks to all who sent us a prayer and some happy thoughts. The wind took a nose dive and our trip across Mobile Bay was beautiful and uneventful. Here is a picture of one web site this am showing the wind dropping down to barely a breeze at 7am and for the duration of our trip.

 

The bay is very expansive and it took us 3 hours to cross it to get to the ICW. The trip was punctuated with only one fishing boat in the channel, otherwise it was pretty clear.

 

We arrived at Roberts bayou by 2:45pm. Germain and Chantal left with us this am, but they are a bit slower. They ended up joining us at 4pm. The cove we are in is rather small, so we rafted together. Germain and Chantal joined us for dinner after 5pm. It sure does feel good to be traveling again!

 

There is a restaurant here called Pirate's cove,  Jim and I went over for a quick visit after we anchored. The people there are really friendly and we had a quick drink while waiting for our partner boat to arrive. Unfortunately I did not have the foresight to bring the camera with me so hopefully I can grab a quick picture as we exit tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be a short day, probably 30 miles or so but hopefully a good a day as today was. Good night all. 

Sunday Nov 23, 2014 – Still in Mobile Low 67F high 74F

It is incredibly frustrating to be "stuck" in a bay when you want to be moving. More so when it is raining all day long and you can't get outside to get a few things done.  So tonight I thought I would show you all how we make our decisions to move or not to move. We start by looking at the National Oceanic Athmospheric Administration or NOAA for short. Today they gave us a small craft advisory as did the weather undergroud web site, but they show it in RED  

Then we check out a few charts that have pictures because we don't have to read and well... they are worth a thousand words!

This one from Passage weather shows winds up to 20 knots blowing south as does the Windalert web site.  

The funny little arrows point to the wind direction and the little bars on the bottom represent wind speed, so ½ bar is 5 knots, full bar is 10 knots, and two bars is 20 knots etc... These map shows 20 knots in the water and 5 to 10 knots on land. We have more sites we check and some reports on the VHF that we listen to, but when all web sites we check say the same thing, there is no guess work involved. In this case they all say "stay put at least until tomorrow am" which is precisely what we will do. We only need 3 hours to cross Mobile bay, so hopefully tomorrow we get a window of time from 9am to noon to get across and get into the ICW. Y'all cross your fingers and say a prayer now.

Tomorrow hopefully we will be in Roberts Bayou. Good night all.

Long nose gar Low 43F High 68F

Being stuck in Mobile means trying to find things to occupy our time. Today was another cleaning day and the boat never has any shortage of chores to do.
Jim took to sanding and painting all of our cleats. Tomorrow he gets to install them all back on.

I took the job of cleaning all the dirty rusty bumpers and we have lots of those too.

During the day we did get a visit from a long nose gar. Funny looking fish and he was behaving rather oddly. He must have been ill or he was really in the mood to pose for us. Either way he stayed in one spot for quite a while and only moved when Pierre threw a rock at it.

Have a great night y'all.

Nov 21 -Small craft advisory High 76◦F Low 53◦F

Well it looks like we are stuck here a few more days. The NOAA has issued a small craft advisory for this whole weekend for Mobile bay and the Gulf of Mexico.  Storm system as well as high winds will ensure that we do not change our coordinates until at least Monday morning.

Well at least we got the tape off the boat today and ¼ of the caulking done....in shorts!

So here is some before and after pictures of our wood work. No idea how we will spend our time for the next two days, but at this point certainly not traveling down the bay!

Night all.

woodwork before refinishing

Woodwork after refinishing 

Back to Mobile Via Chicago

Well we finally made it back to the boat. Thank GOD and thank Chantal and Germain for picking us up at the airport!

We left St-Catherine on November 19th and there were no issues in Buffalo despite the 6 feet of snow they had in some areas, the airport has barely a dusting of snow. 

Jim cleaning snow off  his car at Mom and Dad's  

However the cold temperatures necessitate some deicing and refueling that cause our flight to be delayed. We arrived in Chicago and ran to our connecting flight as quickly as we could, only to find our plane left about 3 minutes earlier. Tired and out of breath, we walked to the luggage claim to pick up our suitcase, Our luggage apparently runs a lot faster then we do, because it made the plane on time!

Riding the "L" Train

If you remember, we were really disappointed that we were too tall to go through Chicago river so this was our chance to check out Chicago (unintentionally). It was bitter cold in Chicago today, but Jim and I still braved the weather and took the "L" train to the downtown core to check out the Chicago river going through the downtown. We now know why the call it the Windy City and with only a couple of hours to tour and no gloves or hats, this was a rather short visit. Hopefully some day we get to see it when we are not shivering.

Chicago river Downtown

Chicago Architecture

Liane came through with a few pics of the whole gang for me to share as well so I will leave you with a few shots of the girl's weekend. Thank Li, really appreciate you sending all those pics to me....man that was fun!

The girls in the restaurant 

My sisters and Mom

So now we are back home and it is currently 15C. Tomorrow we will put away the winter coats for another month and get ready for the next leg of the trip. We leave for the Mobile Bay crossing on Saturday and then to the ICW we go. Night all.

Going to sleep with 3 of my sisters-in-law

November 14,15 and 16th Girl's weekend Current Temp -1C and Snowing

We have had a wonderful weekend in Hamilton/St-Catherine and Thornhill. Fridy night dinner with a bunch of friends from our Marina, Friday evening Jim spent with our Son and Daughter-in-law while our Daughter and I went to the hotel to meet up with our group.

The shenanigans started early and we did not hit the bed until 1:30am.

Saturday morning we all had a good breakfast before we set out for a day of shopping and ended our evening being told to keep it down at Le Baton Rouge Restaurant.

We had a few late arrivals on Saturday and a few early leavers on Sunday, but total we were 16 rowdy women who had a great time.

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of the whole group, but I hope to when Liane sends me some! 

Tonight we had a lovely family dinner that our daughter-in-law hosted and we are now back Jim's Mom and Dad's for tonight and tomorrow.

We will be flying back to Mobile on Wednesday night, so I will not blog again until Thursday November 20^th. Take care all

ps: Thanks for the weather update Jeff. We may not be as warm as you guys in Dunedin but we have an awful lot of warm hearts around us. 

Nov 13, 2014- Back to Canada - Current temp -2C or 30F

So before I get into this blog, I will clarify, that it is not visiting family and friends that I was dreading, but rather the cold temperatures. When we arrived we were greeted by SNOW! Uugh

 

Our flight home went uneventfully and we arrived in Buffalo right on time. Once we saw Mom and Dad, well all those feelings of trepidation left us and we were just happy to see them.

Mom and Dad had arrived at the airport about 1hr before we did, but unfortunately they were waiting upstairs for us while we were waiting downstairs at the baggage claim. It took 1 hr for us to find each other!

 

Mom tells me It was beautiful when they left St-Catherine, so apparently we brought the cold weather from the south, back home.

 

Ah well the family visits; the girl's play, and the shopping will be worth it.

Friday will be a packed day, we get to see the kids in the afternoon, some friends form the Marina in the early evening and my Mom;  sisters; sisters-in-law  and cousins this evening. Yipee!

New Orleans Day 2 Low 48◦ High 64◦F

Another day in New Orleans and I can see what attracts people to this place. It is a pretty city with lots to see and hear.

We went down to the French Market first thing this am. It is quite near the bay and the wind coming from the water made it that much cooler. After some time walking and visiting, we stopped at a cafe for a hot drink. It was 11am and there was a live band playing some Jazz music. They were really good too.

We saw lots and lots of wrought iron work on people's balconies. One of them even had 2 suites of armor standing guard on either side of the balcony.

Everything is geared to Jazz, including the Holiday inn appropriately called the "Clarinet"

They have  Trolley system in town and $3.00 gets you a day pass to go on and off as much as you please. These are very quaint with their wooden seats and leather straps to hold onto to.

We had very pleasant day but our feet our killing us from all this walking. We are currently back at the hotel, but we have a dinner date with Chantal and Germain for 6pm. I doubt we will be out as late as we were last night, but I thought I would post early just in case. Tomorrow we hit the airport at 7am so we better get some sleep. 

All our complaining about the cold here, I am certain we will be much colder tomorrow. We will only be in Canada for a week, but already we are dreading it.  Good night all