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Thanks to the winds dying off to a calm for a good portion of the night, we all slept well last night down at Shipping Cove off Dog Island after a steak dinner aboard Seminole. Thanks, Jackie for feeding me while Mary was gone.


Seminole remained rafted up overnight to Calypso, and we got underway around 0730 EDT (0630 Southport time).

After finally winning (old-timey word) the anchor out of the bottom I followed Jim and Jackie out into St George Sound for the 23–mile run to Apalachicola and found none other than Journey chugging along. This vessel is a beautifully converted sailboat, which we met in Caladesi State Park back in March after a brief exchange with them in their yellow RHIB, appropriately named School Bus. We spoke them briefly and moved on. They are headed home to the Tennessee River after a winter/spring down here.

Jim was not sure whether or not they were going to bring Seminole to our house before heading off the 123 extra miles to home in Orange Beach, but consideration of the approaching bad weather tomorrow convinced them late in the day to follow me home.

The 100-mile run from Dog Island to Southport was not necessarily something I wanted to do after two consecutive days doing 70- and 123-mile open water trips, but I did not want to wake up Saturday facing a rainy and windy trip home form wherever we chose to stop.

I told Jim and Jackie I intended to run at 1750 engine RPM, 250 more than Jim is comfortable pushing his troublesome transmissions, in order to shorten the trip and get home before dark, but later in the morning, I backed off that RPM as it was not necessary thanks to some good fortune in helpful tidal currents. I slowed to 1650, yet Seminole kept the couple of mile separation I had created early on at the higher RPM while they ran a mere 1500 or so. When I went to the flying bridge to maneuver into the slip here at home, I found the tachometers there reading 1550 RPM instead of the 1650 showing at the lower helm. That’s a little issue I will have to look into.

Calypso moored at 1730 after 58 days traveling 1275 nautical miles (1466 statute miles) averaging 7.2 knots (8.3 MPH) using about 600 gallons of diesel over about 177 engine hours.

Equipment issues were negligible with the only new casualty a starter button replaced for 30 dollars. Old issues I found time to solve (remember, cruising is fixing your boat in exotic locales) were replacement of a faulty entertainment radio and speakers and a new VHF radio antenna to replace an iffy one and a slow lubricating oil leak on the starboard engine. Good maintenance equals carefree cruising.

Until the next cruise....

Crossed the Gulf!

We got up as planned before 0500 and got underway at 0520 in the pre-dawn pitch black. Luckily, the Main Shipping Channel at Cedar Key is pretty wide, because we had to rely almost exclusively on the GPS with its radar overlay plus the GPS on my laptop as backup to get out of there. Jim was astern playing his searchlight back and forth, which helped me see some of the unlighted marks, but they all showed up on the radar too.


I dropped the hoop here in Shipping Cove of Dog Island at 1950, making the trip across the Gulf 14.5 hours. Luckily the bulk of the run was pretty smooth, but it was a bit of a washing machine for a couple of hours at both ends.

We saw lots of sea turtles, spotted dolphins, and other assorted sea life as we progressed, and Jim caught a couple of bonito before he gave it up catching something good to eat as a lost cause.

Tomorrow’s schedule is a bit up in the air for me, as I may decide to push the hundred miles to home, skipping White City, which is our planned stop.

Cedar Key

Underway as planned at 0800 from Tarpon Springs – finally, we were on our way.


Winds and seas were relatively kind. We had about 3-foot swell from broad of the port bow to around toward the beam. It was a tiny bit of a challenge to make a sandwich, but all in all, a nice day with cool breezes from the west and air temp at noon around 73F.

Due to the wind and sea rolling right up the Main Ship Channel here at Cedar Key, we were unable to anchor in the spot I had picked out, and we ended up dropping the hook at 1710 about two and a half miles farther up the channel.

We will have about 14 hours of daylight tomorrow to get 126 statute miles to Dog Island Pass. However, we are tied down to about 1500 RPM because Seminole’s drop-center transmissions tend to overheat above that RPM, which gives us about 7.4 or so knots through the water, or 8.5 MPH. Thus, it will take us 14.8 hours to get to the pass. Unless we leave before dawn (did I say FOG is predicted tonight?), we will be running the inlet in the dark.

There is also the potential problem of the west-to-east long-shore drift of the northern Gulf we could run into, further slowing us.

Weather prediction is good for tomorrow; so we’ll get up at 0500 (dawn is 0644) and see what we can accomplish.

A front runs through

Happy Cinco de Mayo for those so inclined. I wonder when this particular ethnic celebration will become a national holiday?


So late last night I walked outside and felt the cool, dry breeze as the latest front makes its way through here. I turned off the air conditioners and opened some windows and slept well. This morning I am in a long-sleeved shirt to guard against the chill, and the boat is tugging at its mooring lines and squashing its fenders as if anxious to get underway. However, wise sailors know better – this is a great day to be in port.

Hopefully, the forecast will hold, and the Gulf will do its usually “laying down” after a front allowing us to scoot toward home waters.

Hanging .....

Jim ad Jackie and I have been keeping busy doing lunch, laundry, and West Marine runs – how does anybody have time to get underway?


When not doing that stuff, we find some boat projects to keep us busy.

Today they will take the car and head off inland to visit old family friends while I take my afternoon nap or read or whatever.

With seas 3-5 feet offshore today, we are comfortable sitting here in Tarpon Springs. The next window for getting underway toward Cedar Key is Wednesday. That will likely put me at home by Saturday unless I decide to run 98 miles home on Friday from Dog Island. Since I am single-handing, it may not happen as I’ll likely be a bit tired from the 123-mile run from Cedar Key.

Here we sit

Mary got her stuff packed into her rental car and departed about 1030 – that’s Mary-time for a planned 1000 departure.  She is in Lake City tonight with daughter Florence and family and will head for home in the morning where she will remain a day before heading to daughter Lynn’s in Beauregard, AL for her graduation and a few days visiting.

I spent the remainder of the day dealing with getting Mom and follow-up appointment for her ER visit of last week after she suffered a compression fracture of her left arm and buying and installing a CD/FM receiver and speakers to replace the old broken stuff aboard.  Got tunes now!

Mother Nature offered a bait to lure us into the open Gulf with a10-15 knot easterly winds and calm seas tomorrow, but we wily cruisers double checked some other features of the forecasts and found good chances of thunderstorms and increasing seas.  Ever been in a small vessel at sea in a thunderstorm?  You will NOT make that same mistake twice!

So here we sit exemplifying the definition of cruising – fixing your boat in exotic locales.