Crossing the Gulf of Mexico – The Big Bend and West Florida Peninsula
January 24, 2024 (My travelogue and more on the Expedition Goals)
I was watching some bad weather develop in the Gulf of Mexico as I prepared to return to Panama City and launch WW the first week of January. As I flew into Houston, TX to catch my regional flight, the line of very intense storms met us creating a rather uncomfortable flight and landing. All local flights were canceled, and I spent a stormy night in Houston. My early morning flight east chased a massive wall of storm clouds that we caught up with in Panama City. When that bumpy approach broke through the clouds, we could see a very drenched and debris-strewn landscape and began hearing the news of tornados that had touched down a few hours earlier. I called Miller Marine as we hit the ground (literally) and fortunately, the swaths of the storm had passed south of WW - phew.
Michael from Panhandle Marine Control and I launched WW and reset her new chart plotter and autopilot the next day, then I slipped down to the city for the night, preparing the boat for its next series of big water adventures. Crossing the Gulf from Florida’s Panhandle to its Western Peninsula can be either a 150 NM trip to Clearwater, FL, or several 50 NM segments which both begin around Carrabelle, FL. I was doing the segments because I wanted to see the Big Bend region, plus the weather forecasts were persistently unsafe for the Gulf including Small Craft Warnings which means winds reaching >20 NM/hour (knots) and waves >2m in height. I had a weather opening the next day and made my run to Carrabelle choosing to travel in the Gulf versus the Inter-Coastal Waterway. The Gulf was rough coming through the mainland gap at Panama City Beach, but calmed to rolling, swells to 3’ (the wave height – top to the bottom of the trough) on a reasonable wave period of 4-5 sec on my starboard stern (SE), and wind from the NE creating 1’ waves on my port bow as I reached about 5 NM offshore – the shoreline and shallows near the shore tend to pile up waves, making conditions rougher. I headed SW for the first few hours, then turned NE into the wind with the diminishing swells behind me for the final 2 hour run into Carrabelle. After making the turn, I was amazed by the Apalachicola River discharge coming through the St. Vincent Island pass that created a brown water plume 5 NM offshore, complete with whole trees. This was the flooded river produced by the recent storm. The first tree and its roots looked like a person standing on a piece of flotsam. You can imagine there was some confusion of thoughts as you begin to plan for someone potentially cast adrift in rough seas, and then realize you “just” need to navigate partially submerged, whole trees this far offshore.
My adventure heightened when WW developed an unnerving vibration about 1 hour from port. I was able to check the engine room which had more water than normal because the auto-bilge had failed otherwise it seemed fine, but the rough seas kept me from safely getting a look at the propeller and shaft. I found an engine speed that reduced the vibration, then limped at 8 knots into Carrabelle a bit desperate about making it while hoping there was no engine damage being incurred. It took 2 hours until I docked at C-Quarters Marina with the local mechanic promising to come over as soon as possible; yes, there was only one within a 2-hour drive. There was nothing more for me to do except thank my overseers and hope that WW was okay.
The next day I discussed my situation with Captain Kim and the local posse at C-Quarters Marina. Kim was recently and reluctantly retired because sea life takes a toll on human bodies, and the marina store was a hangout for local guys with salty stories. The river water was coffee black and the locals were clear that I did not want to get in their highly polluted river: “Call Jack Fonner the diver, he can fix anything under there, but not on Sunday ‘cause that’s his golf day, all day”. The mechanic never made it, but Jack showed up early Monday morning alone on his Jon boat with a motorized air supply and diver’s helmet. He was 74 and retired from commercial diving. He kept the local work because his wife wouldn’t give him any of their retirement money for his golf addiction. He was another water character complete with chilling diving stories, and most resonating was his agreement with the locals: “Last time I got scratched up in here the hospital couldn’t identify all the staph [Staphylococcus aureus] variants I’d grown…”. Jack was very professional, albeit slightly northern Florida/diver cowboyish, but you have to be fearless and a bit crazy to be a commercial diver. Within a few minutes, he cut a piece of heavy-duty plastic from WW’s shaft and dropped it on the swim deck. We finished up and I took WW out for a test run. Everything was back to normal – big phew. This incident added a new twist to my plastic in the environment story that begins below.
The weather windows to cross the Gulf weren’t opening which kept me in Carrabelle for most of a week. The cold front also brought night-time temperatures as low as -7oC. Besides freezing my person, cold requires getting up to run the engine and water heaters intermittently through the night to keep water lines from freezing. Even Captain Kim had to don a Canadian-looking parka and a pair of shoes in place of her regular flip-flops. The weather forecasts and apps guide my life on the water, but I’m always seeking out the local, hard-learned knowledge. Over the week in Carrabelle, Kim provided expert weather interpretations while she mentored me on the Gulf waters. She made sure I understood that the Coast Guard gets angry if they must come get you when after issuing a Small Craft Warning, i.e., reinforcing the basic rule to stay in port if a warning is in effect.
My Looper associates were arriving from the west via the less weather-impacted Inter-Coastal Waterway. On a day when the weather window was still uncertain, I set out in a flotilla of 10 Looper boats headed to Steinhatchee, FL about 50 NM away. Kim predicted a bathtub ride for the flotilla but said it was doable. Once onto the open Gulf, we had 3-4’ swells on 4-5 seconds just off our nose to the SE (starboard bow) with 1-2’ waves on our port bow (NE) for about 3 hours before it settled down. Her predictions about the sea state were correct, although rougher than most of the flotilla desired given the shaky voices after we landed in Steinhatchee. Even WW was forced to run at 8 knots to keep the cabin interior intact and I still didn’t get to drink my coffee - imagine riding a rubber duck in your choppy bathtub with a hot coffee in hand.
Steinhatchee was rebuilding. It took a direct hit from Hurricane Idalia and the marinas were in various states of repair. The weather remained nasty keeping me port-bound, which gave me a chance to catch up with a former student, Dr. Jonathan Freedman now working on invasive species for various agencies from his home in Gainesville, FL. We visited the “big” waterfall on the Steinhatchee River, but in a land just 100’ above sea level, the fall was more of a trip. It is always fun to meet up with young, successful scientists you were fortunate to nurture briefly along their career paths.
Every marina brings me an interesting collection of boat people, locals, and their stories. In Steinhatchee I was lectured by a local fisher on the “truth” about Mr. Trump. As a biologist, I have some understanding of animal behaviour and natural selection, so I find it fascinating to hear people (biology nerd alert - we are animals) enraptured by proven falsehoods and supporting with complete zealousness a person who is a criminal and self-proclaimed, malevolent narcissist with no intention of helping others unless it helps himself. You can catch people out and they will admit he is a bad person; however, they express an unrelenting anger with American politicians (a fair assessment, but for the wrong reasons) and their belief that antithesis Mr. Trump is the only answer even if seemingly intelligent alternatives are on offer. The phenomenon is similar to the staph infections Diver Jack had to suffer – extremely painful and dangerous if not treated – yet some Americans choose to ignore the extreme danger for their country and the world while others seem too poorly educated to overcome their indoctrination and comprehend the danger. This particular conversation included a reference to a new civil war because, frighteningly, some Americans talk about a do-over of their deadly Civil War, complete with an unspoken but unequivocal replay of the “white racists versus the rest” battle lines.
I understand their anger but helping them to understand the real truths seems insurmountable sometimes. We are being undermined by our Western democracies, but that is a complex conversation about greed, gluttony, accountability, and more for another day. Closer to the goals of the Weaving Waters Expedition, our democracies are built on the “free market” model with its sound financial planning but fail us because they lack a budget line item for the true cost of living on this planet. In North America and particularly the USA, World War II sparked great advances in technology that continue to significantly albeit sometimes subtly alter natural environments, creating hidden health threats and uninhabitable places as pointed out by Rachel Carson and many who followed. People were sold on the growth of technology as making your life easier which is sometimes true. For example, our digital world is an amazing source of information that enhances our well-being every day, but it is also very deadly and an accelerating threat to humanity. We were sold on moving manufacturing offshore (out of our countries) to reduce our out-of-pocket costs, but again those models didn’t include that budget line item for the real cost of living nor the impacts on the environment and other humans. All this new wealth and free time fed people’s quest for more “stuff” and the advent of consumerism with its mantra, “Don’t fix it, just buy a new one”. It is well-documented that the disciples of consumerism knew that people needed to repeatedly buy more stuff, and thus emerged “…the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”, functional and psychological obsolescence, and the rise of faked news and politicians like Mr. Trump. Consumerism is the unspoken plague that has overtaken Western societies and all humanity.
Everywhere I travel in the USA people buy and then trash everything, which also happens in Canada and Europe but at smaller scales. For example, a dinner out in the USA will produce a food box - usually plastic, a bag to carry it - usually plastic, plastic utensils, a drink in a plastic or styrofoam cup, and a plastic straw often wrapped in plastic. All of this goes in the bin. A drink at the local pub results in a plastic glass and sometimes a straw, a glass bottle, or an aluminum can all tossed in the bin. A trip to the grocery store can supply as many plastic bags as you wish (I bring my reusable bags which baffles most grocers.) The world can’t survive as long as 300M people generate 2 kg of trash per person per day when the rest of the world averages 0.2 kg/day. Unbelievably, almost 50% of American trash is food (24%) and plastic (18%). Food waste is a serious problem in Canada and the USA. In America, it amounts to 24% of a person’s cash wasted and about 100B meals a year wasted when people are starving all around us. Food waste also creates stresses on the environment caused by unnecessarily used water equivalent to supplying 50M American homes which would overcome the current lack of potable water in homes across America, 350M kg of unneeded pesticides, 6B kg of wasted fertilizer, and the wasted energy and added CO2 to the atmosphere equivalent to operating 42 coal-fired power plants. These numbers are astounding and to a person, everyone agrees it is a problem in the USA, however, there is no cost or marketing to curb these behaviours. I often hear that there is no market for reuse and recycling, including in Canada, but that is unambiguously false because we don’t demand that production and use have line items to account for the life-cycle cost of stuff. If this costing existed, then behaviours would be quickly altered as proven by Canada’s blue box recycling story that began in Kitchener, ON.
Chatting with passionate people about their beliefs is enlightening and sometimes it triggers my research and writing in support of the expedition goals. Others have simply charming stories to tell. I met a couple in their 70s traveling with their retriever in a sailboat smaller than WW with no electronics. They were doing the “loop”, but they were clearly not in the “Looper fraternity”. I was invited over for drinks, but pretty sure we couldn’t all fit inside to escape the freezing temperatures. We convened in WW’s cabin chatting about their adventures on a 5-year sailboat journey taking them as far as Fiji and their VW-camper travels across North America. Their loop adventure was agreed upon based on the promise that the shoreline would always be visible. Sailing 30 miles across the Gulf one day only to be chased back to port by the rough seas was, apparently, not consistent with the original bill of sale. They left their boat to visit family and I headed south sorry I wouldn’t hear more of their life stories.
Another new friend was alone on a 40’ cruiser with an open, command bridge helm which requires piloting the boat from the outside and three levels above the water line. That situation creates some real challenges for solo boat handling, especially in the tight quarters of docking and locking. Soloing wasn’t his plan though. In December a few weeks before departing his partner backed out, but he only chuckled about his new situation. I suspect his lifetime of complex maneuvering of aircraft in bad weather while landing on aircraft carriers and flying commercial airlines made him a bit intrepid. We are on the same basic traveling schedule, and I am looking forward to hearing more about his solo adventures.
My next expedition legs would take me to Crystal River then Tarpon Springs where the Atlantic Inter-Coastal Waterway begins.
Until next time from peninsular Florida,
Allen
Pass-a-Grille, FL
