And Now A Word From Captain Cook About The Crossing

Aside from docking a boat, driving one is easy; it's a lot like driving a car.  To turn to port (left), you turn the steering wheel to the left.  To turn to starboard (right), you turn the steering wheel to the right.  If the boat is not equipped with an autopilot, hand steering the boat can be tiresome, especially of the water is rough.  You just hang on and do the best you can. In Lake Michigan if the water is rough you have the option of changing directions slightly to change the angle at which the waves impact the boat.  You will still get were you are going though it may take a bit longer.  In Florida, changing direction is not always possible if you are in a channel with shallow water on both sides of the boat.  Here you just rock and roll with waves until you get where you are going.  Not fun!

If the boat has an autopilot, you have two additional options to steer the boat.  One is called "locked heading".  You simply engage the autopilot and the boat holds the course you are presently traveling.  This is useful when you have a long straight course to travel, like when we were on the rivers.  When the river bends, as rivers will do, you can change course by turning a knob on the autopilot control left or right (port or starboard) and the boat will follow the new course.  The lazy person's way to steer a boat.  Even better, if you have an autopilot remote (sort of a remote control for a remote control), you can set on the bow of the boat in the sun and watch the world go by; all you have to do is tweak the autopilot remote left or right every now and again.

                                                       LeeLoo's Autopilot

The "locked heading" option works well as long as there are no contrary winds or currents or tides to deal with.  If you have these forces at play, the boat will steer the course you lock into the autopilot, but the boat will not end up where you want to be (over a long distance of course).

The final option is called "track".  Here you tell the autopilot to navigate the boat to a specific waypoint (latitude and longitude).  And the autopilot, working in concert with the GPS, will adjust for winds and currents and tides such that you will end up exactly where you want to be.  We will use the "track" option when we cross the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow.

It is exactly 170 miles (dock to dock) between Carrebelle and Tarpon Springs.  You first navigate down the Carrebelle River and across the bay to East Pass.  This is a natural pass between Dog Island and St George Island.  Just outside East Pass is buoy "R2".  This is the "entrance" buoy for East Pass and, for us, it's the start of the Gulf crossing.  The destination is buoy "R2" just offshore of Tarpon Springs.  The distance between buoys is exactly 155 miles.

Timing wise the goal is to arrive at buoy "R2" off of Tarpon Springs at 10:00 in the morning.  You want to arrive in daylight so that you can see the crab pots.  You also want to arrive long enough after sun rise such that the sun is not directly in your eyes.   

To arrive at your departure time from "R2" off of Carrabelle, you divide 155 miles by the speed you plan to make.  That gives you the number of hours it will take to make the crossing.  Then you work backwards on the clock to determine your departure time.  For a speed of 9 miles per hour -- the speed we hope to make -- the crossing will take 17 hours.  So, to arrive at 10:00 am the following morning, we have to leave "R2" at 5:00 pm the day before.  Then you add on an hour and a half at each end to get to R2 and to get from R2 to Tarpon Springs to get the total length of the trip, 20 hours total.

The next question you might ask is, "How will Nancy stay awake for 20 straight hours?  Ha!  We'll let you know how it went after we make the crossing.   One more thing, we will be crossing with seven other boats and we will be in radio contact every hour.  That should help.