Crossing the Big Bend and Steinhatchee!

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 213 - October 31, 2017

Today's blog starts with first light at Dog Island and ends with the afterglow of sunset on the Steinhatchee River! In between, of course, was the crossing of the Gulf of Mexico, the Big Bend from East Pass to the Steinhatchee River channel!

We foolishly set our alarm clock for 6:00 a.m., not thinking to see when there would be enough light to paddle Baxter to shore. So we had our coffee and toast in the cabin while it was still pitch black outside! There is always a little bit of light before sunrise, and as it was just starting to get light enough to see anything, Baxter and I headed for shore for the last time on the Panhandle!

First light at Dog Island!

Back at the boat, I put the kayak up on the roof, and we pulled anchor and motored to East Pass, which is the inlet to St. George Sound between St. George Island and Dog Island. Just outside East Pass, we were ready for the real test! How would Daydream perform? Marc and the crew at Wefings Marine had done everything possible. Marc had said it was his personal mission to get Daydream on the plane for the crossing. The trim tabs now worked, we had a Stingray hydrofoil stabilizer, and most importantly, we had a new 11 pitch prop that let the Honda get up to its rated 6,000 RPM wide open throttle.  The tests in the Apalachicola River we thought had gone reasonably well. We had also off-loaded quite a bit of weight before we left. Eddie's Weather WAG told us we would have near perfect conditions. Today would be the day for the real thing!

We left East Pass at 8:15 a.m., I put the trim tabs into the full down position, put the hammer down, and ran the tach up to 5,200 RPMs. Daydream came up easily on a plane, and just like that we were running at 14 -smph. I fiddled with engine attitude a bit, and brought the trim tabs up a little, and we were running at 15 smph, burning 9 gallons per hour. 

The winds were in the single digits and the wave height was measured in inches, not feet!  Not like a mirror, but little ripples! We followed our route out to R26 and then made a slight left to follow our route to Steinhatchee. Our speed varied between 13.9 and 16.1, but most of the time held fairly steady at 15.0 mph. It was not long until we were completely out of the sight of land! I think this was the first time, but perhaps we were out of sight of land crossing Lake Ontario but I really don't remember. We each took a two hour shift. When I took over for my second shift, I knew we would be there before another two hours elapsed!

We arrived at the entrance to the Steinhatchee channel at 1:14 p.m., one minute short of five hours. The channel into the Steinhatchee marinas is LONG, several miles. The first marina we came to that had gas was The Sea Hag, a catchy name for a marina - I never asked what the back story was on the name! We each made our guess on what it would take to fill the tank. We had run 24 miles from Apalachicola to Dog Island, about 3 miles each way, 6 miles total, from East Pass to Cannonball Point where we anchored, all going slow, about 75 miles from East Pass to Steinhatchee channel going fast, and maybe 2 miles into the marina, again going slow, a total of 107 miles. Based on past experience,  I mentally calculated that we had used about 55 gallons from Apalachicola to Sea Hag Marina. Patty, ever the pessimist, guessed it would be 80 gallons. In fact she was afraid we would run out of gas coming across! The actual amount to fill the tank was 51 gallons, so a little better than 2 mpg overall. Based on 9 gph for five hours, I think we used 45 of the 51 gallons on the 75 mile crossing going fast. Well, 15 mph is not really "fast," but for us, it seemed like we were flying compared to the ~7 mph we had cruised almost the entire previous 4,900 miles!

We were going to look for an anchorage after we gassed up, but Sea Hag was pretty empty, and Patty said she thought we should just stay there for the night.  I agreed wholeheartedly!  It would mean not having to find a place to land Baxter, and the Steinhatchee River did not look particularly good for that.  We had just joined BoatUS about a week earlier because AGLCA just advertised that BoatUS was giving a 50% discount to AGLCA members on the basic membership, which brought the cost down from $30 to a measly $15. When I went up to pay for the moorage, he asked if we were BoatUS members, and I showed him a picture of our membership card on my iPhone. He did some calculating and said "That will be $15." It might not have been $15 even, but even without the BoatUS discount, this would have been a dirt cheap marina! Water, power, restrooms and showers for $15 must make this one of the best marina deals going. Floating docks in good condition, too!

If "brunch" is between breakfast and lunch, what is between lunch and dinner?" Lunner"? Anyway, after the crossing and getting tied up, we had our sundowners quite a bit before sundown, and had "lunner" or whatever. Patty had made some ceviche from the Walmart frozen cod, with tomato, peppers, onion, a jalepeno and lime juice, which we ate on pita chips. Quite a bit later, we snacked on fine cheeses on Triscuits with wine.  It's a tough life, but somebody has got to do it!

When I came back from my shower, we sat in the cockpit as it was getting dark, and as always, as amazing as it may seem,  the sun set yet again. The channel back out to the Gulf was really very pretty!

Afterglow on the Steinhatchee River channel out to Gulf of Mexico