After enjoying a great day in Port St. Joe Marina and a great dinner of oysters on the half shell and Grouper sandwiches we studied weather and wave conditions on the Gulf of Mexico for our crossing and it looked like we had a very good window in the next few days.
Northern Light departed the dock at 10:15am on Saturday, Jan 24th heading Southeast (126 degrees) for our crossing to Tarpon Springs. We had a fresh breeze after we cleared the harbor and rounded Point San Blas.
We were able to deploy our full sails and motor sailed all day and night in high seas at first (8-10 foot rollers) receding to calm by morning. We were escorted at times by frolicking Dolphins and sea birds. It was a starry, starry night since we had no moon the sky was brillant with bright stars. The time went by quickly, we had an excellent watch schedule of 4 hours on and 2 hours off maintaining 2 crew members on deck at all times. The sunset was beautiful but the Sunrise this morning as you can see in the photo was awesome! We encountered several shrimp boats working at night and a lot of crab pots when we got near the Anclote Key North entrance to Tarpon Springs.
The entire crossing took 28 hours from dock to dock and we traveled 231 miles. Our average speed was a little over 8 mph which is great for a sailboat.
Glad to be here in Tarpon Springs were it is warm and sunny. It was a perfect crossing!
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