Day 60

We were more exhausted than we thought, and overslept the alarm, and didn’t get moving until 9:00. Because of this, we would not be able to make the 100 miles to Tarpon Springs, and would have to settle spending a night on the hook in Cedar Key. Grant got the boat fueled up and spoke with the dock master on the best anchorages for the night. We had a nice day for cruising; the sea wasn’t as rough since we were only 20 miles offshore at any given time during the day. Cedar Key was on about a 60-mile trip so we were able to get there around 3:00 in the afternoon. It is very shallow around the key and we had to carefully navigate through the channel that was not the easiest to see. Markers were few and far between until we got in closer, and we had to watch the depth sounder very closely. Once in we anchored about 200 feet from the main dock for Cedar Key. This was one of the places that Grant wanted to stop, but unfortunately since we did not have a dinghy, we could not go into town. We were warned that the city dock was very dangerous, and that every boat that tried to tie up got damaged in some way due to the tides in the area. Well, we made it here, but can’t stop!!

Grant found a new feature on the GPS called an anchor alarm. We left the GPS on overnight, and if the boat moved out of a defined diameter (100 ft) the alarm would go off to wake us up. That gave us some added comfort to rest easy.