Round Trip, Cape Haze

Days on cruise: 264

Distance:  6.8 miles

Travel time: 1 hr, 16 minutes

Total trip odometer: 5,746 statute miles

What do you notice about the screenshot below of today’s journey?  Sorta weird, huh? Bob calls it a “software perturbation”. Nonetheless it’s kind of accurate.

Last night at Cape Haze Marina in the high wind was uneventful. Knowing we planned a short trip for today, we got a late start, and after buying fuel and pumping out, we headed south a whole 3.3 miles to Cape Haze Anchorage. This small cove immediately off of the ICW has 9 feet of water and is surrounded by nice mid-size (by ICW standards) homes.

After waiting a couple hours through lunch to make sure the anchor was secure and wouldn’t drag in the high wind, we dropped the dinghy and headed north a short distance to Don Pedro State Park, a barrier island which fronts on the Gulf of Mexico.

There’s a dinghy dock among the mangroves.

We walked the beach along the Gulf of Mexico, where it was VERY windy, looking for pre-historic shark’s teeth, an activity to which we’d been alerted by friend Jim A on “Blue Angel”. We didn’t know much about what to look for other than a brief description from Jim, but turns out we found the right stuff, as confirmed by a Google Images Search after the fact. Here’s our collection. The triangular-shaped teeth are complete teeth, and the others are broken pieces.

It was so windy on the Gulf the waves almost looked big enough to surf.

This crabby guy was feeling defensive when he saw us.

Lots of driftwood in strange poses.

This house is actually ON the beach, in the surf and waves. We were told the house was built in either 1968 or 1986 (the guy working on it couldn’t recall which) and has been lucky enough never yet to be destroyed by a hurricane.

This house is right next door to the one above. Character!

There are lots of houses like this in style and size on this stretch of the ICW; comfortable size, nice, but not ostentatious, the kind we prefer.

After our trip to Don Pedro we returned to Next To Me for a 30-minute nap. Suddenly Cathryn heard Bob speaking in a raised voice (very unusual) “Wake up! The boat is moving!” Jumping out of bed and looking out the window, it was clear our anchor had dragged while we napped, and we were now approaching the shore and a docked sailboat in Cape Haze cove. Nothing like having to hustle and deal with an urgent matter immediately upon waking, groggy from a nap, eh? But we have this routine down cold, assumed our respective positions, pulled the anchor, and headed into the ICW to return for a second night at Cape Haze Marina. We don’t want to spend a restless night worrying about anchor dragging, hence the weird routing in the screenshot as we really did make a round trip journey today. On the way to the marina, we checked the anemometer and found the wind blowing a steady 35mph with gusts to 40mph. No wonder our anchor dragged, even with 6:1 scope.  Happy to be settled in the marina.