Day 173 174 Apalachicola to Clearwater Thursday - Friday November 8&9, 2018

Day 173 174  Apalachicola to Clearwater Thursday - Friday November 8&9, 2018

Clouds and sun battled to a draw again on Thursday Bright Sun reigned on Friday. High in upper 70s Thursday and Upper 80s on Friday.

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Well blog followers you get a "two-fer" in today's post. The reason is Thursday began our crossing of the Gulf to get from the Panhandle to the West Coast of Florida. This involved an overnight crossing.

So sit back and enjoy the story of the night time ride of Paul Revere - the modern version with Admiral Faye in the lead role.

The day began in Apalachicola with us joining the departure of Gypsy and Caeruleus . The former was going across to Steinhactee, a town in the upper peninsula, and the latter will travel with us across the pond to Clearwater.

And here is Gypsy heading out.

Here we are going down the waterfront of Apalachicola

Here is one of the fishing boats from Apalachicola

Gypsy on the way east

We ran about 14 miles to Dog Island. We anchored here for about 4 hours before our departure to cross the Gulf. The reason for the "delay" is one of timing. If you leave about 2:00 pm and then travel through the night at a comfortable speed and then can arrive in the morning. This way your approach to the harbor is able to be done in daylight.

Departing Dog Island - and there is another gaggle of boats that will make the crossing together. They will travel a little slower that we want to go.

The day has been one that the clouds have been winning the battle for dominance of the skies. The view below is the broad view of the expanse of water we will be crossing.

And the "across the pond" view from the flybridge.

A look back. You can see that the clouds are giving up their hold of the skies.

Later in the afternoon the sun is making a case to be seen.

 The seas are only slightly lumpy. We see an occasional whitecap and the wind is dropping nicely.

 Sunset was a special treat. We savored it all the way to darkness.

This shot is looking across the pond toward our destination

More sunset photos that I trust you will enjoy.

You can see our buddy boat Caeruleus. It was good to have a buddy boat. I also had a satellite communication device that I used to send updates of our progress.

 The sunset was wonderful to watch

But all good things must come to an end. And here is the result. This is my dash instruments and you are looking straight out to what we saw for the rest of the night - because the the moon was a "blinding" new moon. There was a ever so slight glow of the lights of Tampa area on the horizon. We welcomed this as a means to provide a sense of the horizon. It was truly unsettling traveling without be abling to see a obstruction in your path - but we prayed there would be none and we were relieved to not have any "bumps in the night."

It was a long night of over twelve hours of darkness. It was great that the sea state calmed nicely once night fell to full. I took a few snoozes on the bridge but was mostly up all night.

Our reward for enduring a dark (and fortunately not a "stormy" night) was a beautiful sunrise. There must have been some land fog as the sun came and was shrouded as it tried to jump up into the sky.

It was great to watch the sun rise directly in front of us. But was so much a glare in our eyes soon after sun up.

Here we are finally approaching Clearwater

And we have found our home for a week.

And so it is now, I trust understandably, time to say ...................

Good Night and May God Bless