We left Michigan on Wednesday afternoon and drove about 24 hours, arriving in St Petersburg on Thursday afternoon. Friday morning Emily dropped Sara and I off at Ft Desoto with the boat and our stuff, then left to pick up my parents at the airport. I got the boat set up and mostly packed, then spent the rest of the day checking out all the other boats and attending the captains meetings.
We got up early on Saturday morning and were thrilled to see that the hotel opened up the breakfast area a bit early, maybe they knew there were a bunch of Watertribers staying there! We got to the beach and finished packing the boat with our water and food. The wind was out of the east so we would have a nice reach across Tampa Bay. At 7am the horn went off and we hit the water pretty quickly.
We had no trouble pushing and pulling the XCR into the water, even when loaded with all our expedition gear. I pushed us out past the sandbar, hopped in and off we sailed!
The sail across Tampa Bay was fantastic! We hit a peak of 7.5 kts but spend most of the crossing at 5 to 6 kts. As we neared Anna Maria Island I noticed that the bungee that was holding the leeward ama to the forward aka was getting loose. This was potentially really bad news... if it let loose, we would have no righting moment and at risk of a capsize. I leaned out and tried to re-lash it, but to no avail. I reefed the sail way down and we paddled the last few hundred yards to the tip of Anna Maria Island. We beached the boat and I re-lashed the ama, adding a couple extra loops for more security. I had no more issues like this for the rest of the trip. Turning the corner towards the southeast, the broad reach became more of a close reach / beat. By about lunchtime, the wind started to die away, so we paddled and sailed through the afternoon. For most of this time, were were within sight of Jarhead in his Sea Pearl and Capt Jack Otter in his Weta trimaran.
As the sun set and the wind totally died, we decided to go "inside" at Venice and paddle the rest of the way to CP1, about 25 miles. Fortunately, the tidal current in Venice was helpful, and we paddled through the Venice canal with a bit of tidal pull. At the end of the canal, we made our first mistake. We decided to keep going, and not stop to eat. We paddled for a few more hours and finally pulled over somewhere in Lemon Bay. We were both semi functional by this time, but stubbornly decided to keep going; we were determined to get to CP1 without stopping! By this time, the wind started to pick up again and we were able to sail in some of the wider parts of the bay. We continued to paddle and sail as the sun started to come up on Sunday morning. As we neared Placida Harbor, we were fighting tide and wind in the narrow channels. Entering Placida Harbor, we tried again to sail. However, the channel is very narrow, and most of the rest of the harbor is very shallow with lots of mud and oyster bars. By this time, the wind was 15 to 20 kts from the south east, pretty much exactly where we wanted to go. We attempted to sail, but kept hitting bottom, so we finally drifted (got blown) into shore and I pulled the mast down. We attempted to paddle, but ended up getting blown in between some boat piers. We tried, and failed, to paddle out from between them, so I finally resorted to removing one of our amas and pulling the boat under all the piers and along the shore.
Finally, I hopped in and we paddled under the bridge at the end of the harbor, and into CP1 at about 11:20am on Sunday, 40 minutes before the "deadline." We chatted with some of the other racers there and with Pelican who was the race manager. It turns out that were were far from the only team to have struggled the first day. Many boats never made it to CP1 and quite a few dropped out when they got there. We ate some food, filled our water, and rested for a couple hours.
We planned a short remainder of the day, planning to sail about 25 miles down Pine Island Sound to Chino Island. More to come next... stay tuned!
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