The next day, the others were supposed to join us for a night. On the way to us, they called and said they were going to stop for fuel, but decided to get a little closer to our jump off spot to cross the Gulf, and they were not going to stay in Carrabelle. This was fine with us as it is a sleepy town and we were ready to make the big jump! I took Lauren to shore in the dinghy to run across the street to a grocery store for some supplies before we left, as we knew we could be anchoring for a few days and wanted some backup water jugs, fresh bread and milk. That didn’t take long, and then we waited. Once Trinity arrived, they went to the fuel dock and Sirius had continued on to the anchorage. We got ready to pull the anchor as they were departing and I had some trouble getting it up. The stern anchor had really dug in and I had to do some maneuvers to get it out, then we had to get the front anchor out, without sliding any further out of the channel as it gets real shallow, real quick. Once we got the anchors up we took off to follow them to the anchorage.
We had researched on our own places to anchor that were protected and were listed in our guide book as a good jump off spot. From here there are a few options: 1. go straight across some 180 miles, which requires an overnight passage. That is a ‘no’ for us. 2. Go across a little angled, making it a 2 stop trip, but it still requires a night passage and two jumps of almost 100 miles. That is also a ‘no’ from us. 3. Do what is called the ‘rim route’, which makes more stops, but doesn’t take you as far off shore and no night passages. Since we all travel on the slow side, we had all agreed the rim route was the best option. In our research, we saw there was a protected anchorage at Alligator Point. This is where we were heading, or so I thought. There are a bunch of reefs we have to skirt around, and I was watching the boats in front of us head south. Hmmm…maybe they were playing it safe? Then the radio came alive and it was Trinity telling me they were headed to a different anchorage that is around the corner from Alligator Point. Okay; this I wasn’t aware of, and now it made sense why they were going south, as we had to go about ten miles south to get around the point of the reef to get around it. I deviated our course and continued to follow them. In the mean time I started looking for the anchorage on the maps of where they were going. I couldn’t see any designated anchorages, but thought maybe they knew something I didn’t know. At this point we had a few hours of daylight left, and it was too late to turn around. Lauren and I were discussing the options of where they were going, but we decided to stick with them. We should have trusted ourselves, as it turned out they picked this spot to save themselves about seven miles in the morning. To be fair, they also thought it would be a little less windy and somewhat protected, but the spot was literally in the open ocean, about a mile or two from shore, with the wind and waves kicking up. Again, at this point the sun was going down and we had no other options but to drop the anchor and stay here or try to travel back in the dark, through the reefs and shallow areas, which we did not feel comfortable doing. I felt terrible and was angry for a few reasons. We were going to get rocked around all night, and we were too far from shore and it was too rough to even think about taking Frank to land. Poor Frank. We have puppy pads for him to use, but he isn’t too keen on using them. The wind and waves continued through the night, and it was a bit rough. We didn’t even start the generator for dinner as we were getting tossed about. I had some cereal and Lauren wasn’t feeling too good to eat, so once we realized this is it for the night, we went to bed. I wasn’t mad at our friends, I was mad we didn’t listen to our gut feeling and stick to our own plans.
We learned a lesson from this: follow our own plans. The night was rocky, and we knew we would be getting an early start because we had some miles to make and no one would be sleeping too well tonight…