...... It was a Dark and Foggy Night !!!

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico at Night

It was the 16^th March the day we planned to cross the gulf in the good predicted 'weather window'.

It turned out to be more of a crack than a window. The prediction had been for 2ft waves & 10 knots winds or round about that – nothing's ever precise with weather & boating. It was also our 42^nd wedding anniversary which became insignificant as the day progressed. We didn't leave until 6.35pm as a strong wind had come up at 3.30pm (our original planned departure time). We turned out of the bay into reasonable seas & it remained this way until about 9pm when the wind picked up to 10-15 knots & then dropped to 8 – 10. We had some cloud, a half moon & saw a few stars. Some patches of fog came & went and then around 3 am heavy permanent fog came down & we could only see the flags flying on our bow. We slowed from the 7.5 knots down to 4 – 5 knots to reduce the bang if we did happen to hit something or some one. It was a very wet & mist covered all the windows and everything in our enclosed top deck where we drove from. We took nap breaks of ½ to 45 minutes – 1 on 1off - all night, although we really needed 2 pairs of eyes in the black fog. Finally the daylight came about 7.30 but no sun.

About 9.am we had a 1ft glassy sea & a 5 knot wind giving us some relief. But for the last 4 hours as we dodged the numerous crab pots approaching the coast we had fog again & choppy seas. We got a hell of a fright when we heard a loud bang and a hiss. The fog droplets had landed on one our pfds (personal floatation devices) and caused the co2 cartridge to activate & trigger the inflation of one side of the life vest. We had them sitting in readiness just in case. We quickly put the other one away in a dry cupboard.

We arrived at the marina at 3.30pm after a 21 hour trip covering 149 nautical miles of which 11 hours were in the dark. We were pleased that we had completed the long journey but the fog had never been in the equation. On the plus side we were never blinded by the rising sun as we approached the east coast – a problem when trying to pick out the crab pots.

We are in Marker 1 marina in Dunedin just south of Tarpon Springs. It has all we need including a free laundry so I've caught up on all the washing. We are not down town but we walked across the road to a local breakfast/lunch place for lunch today & down the road a short distance to a General Dollar store. There is a St Patrick's Day celebration there tonight (an Irish celebration in a very Scottish town) set up in the shopping car park – we will attend. They celebrate all things Scottish here so we're told so we may hear some bagpipes.