Crystal River to Tarpon Springs, FL

January 16: I reluctantly leave Crystal River, make my last Gulf of Mexico hop, and settle in for a few days in Tarpon Springs.

I slept amazingly well. Kings Bay anchorage was dead calm and crazy quiet.

I woke to a beautiful morning with low fog. I made my coffee, fed my pups, and reintroduced them to their special on board pee place. One of them used it. The other gave me a desperate, disappointed look that I tried to ignore.

Sunrise from Kings Bay Anchorage. It was a gorgeous morning.

As the sun climbed higher into the sky, nature put on a show for me. There were fish jumping out of the water in various places around the boat, obviously spooked by a predator below them. That brought in birds, that swooped around, trying to catch the fish. Pelicans were part of the crowd and they flew amazingly close to the boat. I didn’t get many photos of all this. Instead, I just watched, entranced by the show. In a few places, I saw bubbles from something just under the surface and I’m pretty sure they were manatees.

I honestly felt as if I could have stayed there all day and another night if it weren’t for two things: weather moving in that could make the next leg difficult, if not uncomfortable, and a dinghy that still wasn’t dialed in 100% for use. I had to continue on that morning to Tarpon Springs. It would be my last Gulf of Mexico hop — at least for a while — and I could also retrieve the dinghy motor extension handle I needed to make my dinghy usable.

The Last Gulf Cruise

There was no current when I lifted and stowed the anchor at about 9 AM. I’d only had about 25 feet of chain out and I think most of it sat on a pile at the bottom. It came up mostly clean and the anchor locked into place. The boat remained pretty much motionless. I made my way back into the cabin. The engine was already running and my pups were already on their blanket on the seat beside mine. I put the engine into forward idle and eased out between crab trap buoys and a few other boats on glassy smooth water. Then I was in the channel and heading back down Crystal River.

Nagui in Boundless was only minutes behind me. At speeds ranging from about 5 knots to just under 8 knots — to respect the minimum wake zones — it took a full hour to get back down the river and into the Gulf. It was a beautiful morning just made for cruising. Again, I found myself wishing I could have spent another day and night at Crystal River.

Out in the Gulf, the water was calm. I followed the channel out into deeper water, safe from potential tangles with crab traps for just a little while longer. Boundless remained behind me. Nagui and I had decided to do the buddy boat thing and make the trip to Tarpon Springs together. We were staying at the same marina — in fact, I have him to thank for telling me about this unlisted marina echoes every other marina in Tarpon Springs that I called was full. He was spending just one night at MAR-MARina and then moving to the marina in town for a few more nights; I had booked the same night and didn’t know what I was doing after that.

Boundless is a Rosborough 25, which is a trawler a little smaller than mine with an outboard motor. Nagui had mentioned some concerns about his engine possibly not giving him the RPMs it should. Eventually, he’d find a place with someone who could look at it. But until then, he seemed to want to travel at a slower pace than I liked to out on open water. Still, we were doing the buddy boat thing and I’d do my best to keep my speed down. So when we finally made the turn to the south out in the Gulf, I dialed in an RPM that gave me 8.5 knots.

We chugged along at that speed for a while, dodging the occasional crab trap buoy. It was easy going, but very boring. I know I saw dolphins because I have some terrible video of them. (It is impossible for me to get a good photo of dolphins, which I have seen every single day of the trip since I got to the Gulf ICW south of Mobile so I’ve stopped trying.) I have no notes from 11 AM until 2:40 PM. That’s when I noted that I sped up and the water had gotten choppy.

What had happened is that over time, Boundless had fallen back a bit behind me. Not far enough to get concerned or slow down, but I did notice it. Then Nagui got on the radio and said he wanted to slow down because he was burning too much fuel and was concerned about having enough to make it to Tarpon Springs at that pace. Of course, the faster we go, the more fuel we burn, but as I mentioned in another post, it all comes down to efficiency and gallons per hour burned. I didn’t know anything about the fuel efficiency of Boundless.

I was going out of my mind with boredom at 8.5 knots and the introduction of a light chop in the water was not going to make that any better. I asked Nagui if he minded me speeding up and he said he didn’t. So I pushed the throttle forward to 2800 RPM and got my speed up to 13.5 knots. Before long, Boundless was a speck in the distance behind me.

Near the end of the cruise, as I was coming up on Anclote Key, I did some dancing with another Looper boat that seemed to be having some trouble slightly farther out into the Gulf than I was but moving in the same general direction. I can’t remember its name, but it was on Nebo showing an AGLCA flag. It would weave about and stop and go. I slowed a bit and watched it, at one point getting close enough that they could have signaled to me that they needed help. But they neither waved nor tried to reach me on the radio. I assumed they were dealing with crab trap avoidance and kept going.

Finally, I turned into the Anclote River channel and followed it up the river. MAR-Marina was about halfway to the town of Tarpon Springs on the port side.

I called ahead on the radio and Shawn, the dockmaster, gave me instructions to get in. He directed me into a very tight slip close to the land end of the dock with short finger piers. He instructed me to drive toward the floating fuel dock and then back into the slip. He was on the fuel dock when I arrived and climbed onto the bow of my boat as I was making the turn to back in. As I backed past the outside post, he threw a dock line around it. I eased back as far as I could, using the thrusters to keep me straight. Fortunately, there was very little wind or current. Despite the difficulty of the spot, I didn’t have much trouble getting in and I think it was Shawn’s help that made it so easy.

It was 4 PM. After a 7-hour cruise, I had arrived.

Here’s my Nebo log for January 16, 2023. I’m not quite sure why there’s a data gap; it could be because I was out of cell phone coverage. I’m pretty sure the mileage is correct. Download a PDF log file with more info. Track Do It Now on Nebo.

Boundless arrived about an hour later.

I’d wind up spending three nights there, reuniting again with Kim and Ted on Pony, and getting a lot of work done. But that’s for another blog post.