Dunedin to Crystal River

   
    Day 4 When you are planning a boat trip you have to be flexible. Rigid schedules get destroyed and lead to frustration and disappointments. The last leg of our trip was almost too long for one day but not long enough to split into two days, but the weather was absolutely perfect and sea conditions for a northward trek in the open Gulf were flat calm and ideal. We considered stopping and anchoring behind Anclote Key for 1 night to shave an hour and a half of what we estimated as a 7 hour trip but then thought, “let’s go for It!”.
    
    We wanted to get an early start so we pulled out of Beso Del Sol in Dunedin at 8:20 am and got back on the Intercoastal and motored North. We ran the generator to keep the AC on so that we could make some coffee and try piloting Pau Hana from the lower station. Our new Simrad GO9 in the upper station will pair with a smart device and create an additional remote navigation unit so we had the iPad at the lower helm. It worked great and allowed us to use the Simrad from below. The Camano has a great pilot house with plenty of windows and the engine noise level was good. This let us know that operating from below would be the way to go if the weather was bad. Still nothing beats navigating from the fly bridge!
    
    We made the North end of Anclote Key at around 10 am and started the route I had programmed to Crystal River. The entire run was uneventful except for the cool wildlife we could see from the bridge. On numerous occasions dolphins would surface and swim over to and under the boat. We could see them turn sideways to eye us. Hundreds of Needlefish would fly out of the surface and skip over the water until they got far enough away to dive back into the gulf. Seeing the ocean creatures never gets old.

    We had a nice lunch along the way as moving at 8.5 mph means you can relax. About 1:30 pm I shut off the generator since we stayed up top. I decided to bump the engine up to 2500 rpm to get some speed. At 2000 rpm (about 8.5 mph) the engine burns about 1.9 gph which is approximately 3.9 mpg. The 2500 rpm increase meant the fuel burn went to 3.8 gph but only gained us 1 mph in speed. Again, we have to get used to going slow. 
    
    We realized that an Auto Pilot, especially for these long open runs was a necessity. Also a necessity would be a couple of rod holders and some fishing gear as we were doing although a somewhat fast trolling speed, a speed that would allow us to pick up a fish or two!
    
    It became apparent that we underestimated how long the trip really was. I cut some of the corners on our route but I know from experience that when coming from the South you have to move in gradually to avoid shallow rock patches that are pretty far out. Once we were close to the Crystal River channel markers I decided I would go ahead and open up the engine to 3000 rpm. I knew it would mean a little more water from the raw water pump into the bilge but each time the pump alarm went off we timed it at 10 seconds and knew it was keeping up easily with the water. Now back to fuel economy. At 3000 rpm we were doing  10 mph but our fuel burn was now 6.8 gph, 3 1/2 times the economical burn! The engine is rated for 3900 rpm (I wasn’t going anywhere near that) but I did want to know how the faster speed affected the boat. We started to get a quartering sea to our stern so the faster pace definitely made steering a whole lot easier.
    
    At 5:15 pm we docked at our house, a mere 9 hours and 76.9 miles later. Too much for 1 day for sure.
    
    The final leg of the trip burned about 29.6 gallons of diesel, compared to the 27.5 we used the entire 3 days prior. When I weigh this against the big twin engine we had that uses a significant amount more, the slower speed is WAY more worth it, but the reason for the trawler is not speed, it’s comfort and economy & I think we got that.

Final Stats
Gasparilla Marina to Crystal River 
178.3 miles - 23.4 hours - 57 gallons of fuel - a ton of fun!


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