The Crossing

The Crossing is one part of this trip that everyone chats about.  It’s a big deal.  It can go smooth or it can be miserable with heavy seas or worse issues.  The same day our flotilla crossed there was two other boats traveling together. One of the boats had a known leak before leaving and sank. The other boat rescued the people and took them the rest of the way across. We could hear the calls to the coast guard. Never fear, our crossing was nearly flawless. The crossing itself is marker to marker out in the Gulf which is 150 miles, but we had 2 hours before and 2 hours after those markers to travel.  Our trip took 24 hours and traveled closer to 170 miles.

 

 

 

We left our dock at 12:00 with a 2-hour trip to meet the flotilla of 5 other boats we were crossing with.  We met them at the opening by Dog Island at exactly the same time.  Man, we are good. Steve Lasher from Sanctuary was the lead boat. We followed like little ducks in a row.

 

The sun set and we got robbed of spectacular ocean view sunset due to clouds on the horizon.  With clear skies above and no moon yet, it was really dark. You couldn’t see anything except the small lights of the flotilla.  The good part of that is the stars were amazing.  We could see the milky way and a billion stars above.  We watched the moon rise with spectacular orange color at first, then it was a bright light for us to be able to see by. The sunrise was spectacular from the middle of the ocean.

To make sure everyone was awake, we did hourly rollcall. How we did this, was each boat took turns asking a question. Each boat had to answer. Example of the 20 some questions asked. Most interesting animal on trip, what did you do in your previous- to- the- Loop life. Etc.  We learned a few facts about each other. Most importantly, we jabbered for 15 minutes and were all wide awake.  It made the time go by quickly.

Scott did some fishing and caught two Bonitas, which are known as little tuna.  They really run so lots of fun to catch.  There were mixed reviews on line about the taste of the fish.  It is a dark meat fish. We baked it and it wasn’t bad, but not our favorite fish.  We prefer the whiter fish.

We had to time our trip so that it was daylight by a certain spot in order to see and dodge crab pots.  Oh man, were there a lot of crab pots!  They were not easy to see especially with the sun glinting off the water.  We radioed each other when we saw them to help each other out.  One boat pick up a pot.  Scott was getting his suite and dive gear ready in case he had to dive under the boat to free the prop, but fortunately it was only caught on his rudder, not wrapped around the propeller.  They were able to free it rather quickly and off we went.

I would have to say our Crossing was flawless (except the little crab pot thing)  We feel like we have really accomplished something!

Here are a few other pictures from the trip.

Thanks for reading!

Karen and Scott

Random Unique picture of the day: