Friday, April 15

Pelican Bay, Cayo Costa Island

The Day From Heaven:

We decided to go on the “outside” this time so we could avoid the bridges.  The wind was right on our nose, so we had to motor the whole way.  We put our new autopilot on a “goto waypoint” setting, and it did wonderfully!  We had to disengage it fairly often because of all the crab pots floating everywhere, but it was still terrific.   It made the day go so much easier. 

It's amazing to me what a gorgeous color the water is.  It's a wonderful aquamarine color; it's so vivid it doesn't even look real.

 It was a wonderful trip!

The Evening From Hell:

We had decided to spend the night anchored out at Pelican Bay rather than to go to a marina.  Many people had told us about this wonderful bay next to an island that is a state park right on the Gulf.  They did say it was really tricky to get into because of all the shallows, but we felt sure we’d do fine since we had three sets of approach directions. 

It took longer to get to Cayo Costa than we thought, so we were getting a little concerned about the approaching darkness.  Still, we got to the entrance of Pelican Bay around 5:00 pm, which should have given us plenty of time.  We got out our approach directions.  The unfortunate thing about them, we discovered, was that they were conflicting.  We finally picked one set and proceeded into the bay – and got stuck.  Sam tried to motor us off the sand bar but it didn’t work.  Just then a large power boat came over to us.  I thought they were going to help pull us off, but NO, all they wanted was directions to some marina.  So, we went to our tried and true backup plan – the dingy.  We lowered the dingy and Sam got in.  He motored along to the bow where I lowered our anchor into the dingy, along with almost 250 feet of line.  He tried to motor out to the deeper part of the channel, but the wind and current kept turning him around and getting him all tangled up in the line.   Finally, he got where he wanted to go and lowered the anchor.  He came back, handed me the dingy line, and went to the bow to start the windlass.  I tied off the dingy and went up to help him.  He was “windlassing” away when he happened to look back.  “The dingy’s getting away!” he yelled.  We ran to the stern but it was already out of reach.  So, poor Sam torn off his shirt, grabbed a life jacket, and jumped in.  He had to swim a long way because the wind was blowing the dingy out farther and farther, but he eventually caught it.  The bad news is, he couldn’t climb up into it, so he had to tow it back!  That was incredibly hard.  I got really concerned that he wasn’t going to make it, so I tried to hail the power boat to ask them to tow him back.  They never responded – they just cruised on by him.  I tried to throw the life sling out to him, but the stern was slippery from spilled gas and there was so much “superstructure” in the way that I was only able to get it out there about 15 feet.  At least I got to tow him in for a little way.  This time I double-tied the dingy, and Sam went back to winching.  Hooray, we pulled free!

I had been watching where other boats went as they came into the channel, so I steered us safely into the bay.  Then we motored around looking for a place to anchor.  We found what we thought looked like a good spot and headed over.  Oops, we got stuck again!  Once again Sam tried to motor us off, and once again we didn’t move.  He turned off the motor and tried to think what to do next.  Suddenly we felt the tide lifting us a little, so he rushed over to start the engine.  No go – it wouldn’t start!  The starter button was shot. 

Sam went below to the engine and arced it with a screwdriver.  Very scary, but it worked.  He came back up and motored us right off that sand bar.  We headed for another anchoring spot, and this time were lucky enough to stay afloat and actually get the anchor set.

By this time it was dark and we could barely see.  We didn’t even eat dinner; we just had several drinks and went to bed.                                                                                                           

Sam swimming like crazy to catch the dingy.

Sam slowly dragging the dingy back.  He was exhausted!