Rough Gulf Crossing

This is made out to be a big deal, and it is a pretty big deal. It’s just a corner of the Gulf of Mexico, but typically it takes about 20 hours to get a cross this path so most loopers leave in the afternoon, travel all night in the dark, and arrive the next day.

We have a “go fast” boat so we have the option to travel on plane and squeeze the trip into daylight hours, just barely. At a cost of about 300 gallons of diesel. So that is what we are planning to do. We even paid a meteorologist to give us a private weather forecast for the crossing.

We ran into a confused sea state today that created challenging conditions with a following sea and also a wind driven wave action on the stern port side, so the boat was riding and diving waves coming at us from the port side all day. We had to stay on plane it was the only way to control the boat in these conditions which mean we went over 7 hours at 22 mph with occasional water crashing across the bow. Nancy was able to drive for a while too, and while we felt safe and the Cummins diesels performed flawlessly, it was a tough slog.

The following seas followed us all the way to the bridge entering Clearwater. After all that we had to dodge crab pot markers as we approached Clearwater. Then our slip had a strong cross current from tidal flow along with a strong wind, so that was a fun way to end the day, but we did that smoothly. It didn’t take long for cocktails to come out. And a hose to start washing off the salt that now is everywhere on the boat.

Another looper couple that made the crossing a couple of days ago stopped by to welcome us, and we invited them on board and we shared stories and had a great time decompressing.