2024 Begins… and Some News

2023 ended very well for us.

We were able to spend our first Christmas with our daughters’ families including our grandchildren.

It was pretty epic.

Santa brought a trampoline for Christmas for our two older grandsons and they haven’t been off it since.

It took some engineering skill to put it together. Luckily the assembly was the grandkids’ parents’ job.

After some noisy grunting and straining the job got done, and nothing woke up the young sleepers until 5am.

Of course they could not disturb their parents, but no one told them to not bother their grandparents.

The 5 year old thought it would be funny to fill up his whoopee cushion he’d gotten from his stocking and shove the business end under the door of his grandparents’ room and stomp on it.

At 5am.

It nearly prematurely terminated his grandmother.

Of course, the rest of the morning was enjoyed with coffee and bleary eyes and wrapping paper everywhere until the treasure hunt that ultimately revealed the trampoline in the back yard.

It was a great morning.

We then went to the other daughter’s house. I helped cook a prime rib for dinner. It was a-maz-ing.

The other family’s grandson and granddaughter are both under two and may not understand Christmas but the sight of their eyes looking at you with a smile and a giggle is pretty cool.

We did go back to Tahoe for a few days, but then return to Tampa late the night of January 4.

We spent the last couple days in Crystal Rivers, just getting Selkie back together. We, provisioned and cleaned up any bird residue that was on her, which wasn’t much.

El Niño has been quite hard on Florida this winter.

In a normal winter, the cold fronts come through about every week and a half.

In an El Niño winter, the cold fronts come through about every 3 to 4 days. That really screws up a lot of folks’ desire to move on the Loop.

Cold fronts are the same as anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

As they start to approach, the winds come from of a southerly direction.

The winds don’t start clocking around out of the south until the front is about to arrive. They then blow from a westerly direction immediately following the front passage.

For example, we had a significant front come through yesterday associated with Named Storm Finn.

The winds were blowing 35-40 knots from the south.

As the front passed through, we got a tornado warning and the winds shifted to the west in about 5 minutes and blew gusting to 45-50 for 5 minutes.

Then it settled down to a steady west-northwest wind at 25-30 for several hours.

If you look at any gradient of a cold front, it’s pretty amazing to see the compression of air that causes the winds to flow along the front from the southwest to the northeast, and as a cold front moves through strong winds follow behind it out of the west northwest.

This is the same as Florida as it is in Michigan. In our case we’re glad we have stout Selkie because she gives us a little more flexibility and some of the other loopers and some of their boats.

Nevertheless, it is pleasure boating, and we do like to be in better weather as opposed to worse weather.

We decided to go ahead and leave Crystal River on 1/8.

The forecasts were borderline for our criteria.

Wind 16 from the east (we prefer 15 or less), waves 2 feet (ok) diminishing to 1 foot in the afternoon.

Beam seas are not a problem for us with our stabilizers.

The biggest issue was the low tide when we needed to leave.

We popped out of the mud at Pete’s Pier promptly at 8am, passed a sailboat grounded in the middle of the river, reached the entrance by Shell Island just before 9 and bumped our way along the bottom by Shell Island into the Gulf.

Even though we tapped bottom a couple times, Selkie with her 18 tons gently pushed her way through.

Outside we went up to 14 nm offshore to avoid some hazards based on advice found here in the forum from those who went before us (remember that for every mile out in the Gulf, the bottom gets deeper by a foot).

We saw winds sustained 15-20 most of the way although we did experience some winds at 25 and gusts that were occasionally 30 knots.

Waves were 2’ as forecasted with a few 3 footers here and there. Stabilizers were operational and needed.

It was a sporty ride for some of the 8.5 hours it took for us to get to Tarpon.

And, of course, there were crab pots the entire way down.

We pulled into Tarpon Springs and backed into our slip at dusk.

We secured ourselves well. Storm Finn was arriving the next day, and the precursor south winds were already building fast.

We were safe and sound, so we went to dinner at a local watering hole, and then, pretty tired, went to bed.

Tarpon Springs could wait for us in the morning.

Now for our news:

We are going to pause our Loop for the summer, beginning February 27 until the end of October. I finally get to fix my shoulder, and the long rehabilitation requires I be in Tahoe for a few months. By then it will be Hurricane season, and so Selkie will go on the hard in Port Charlotte, Florida for that time.

In the meantime, we will continue to explore the Gulf Coast of Florida, and pray for better weather.