TideChaser Followers November 27, 2014         Day 7 Happy Thanksgiving

Today the crew of TideChaser is very thankful.

We started out from Marina Jacks in Sarasota, FL at 5:00am. I guess I should actually say Walt and Gary were up and motoring us down the ICW to take us out to the Gulf of Mexico at that time. When all of a sudden I feel the gentle yet terrible ramming into a sandbar feeling as the boat slides and comes to a standstill. YIKES! The next thing I heard was the motor being revved backward as the guys try to release Tidechaser from the sandbar. When that happened- 7:00am I’m up, 7:15am Chris is up.

What happened? We were turning to wait for a bridge that doesn’t open till 11:00am and as we did we got over to far into the shallow water. It was low tide. I will give him that. But as most of our followers know this is a regular event by the Warfel’s we love getting caught on sandbars, hanging out, fishing , drinking till the tide turns and releases us from the hold she has on us and sends us back to our beach house at Oceanlakes. Right Hines’s folks? OH Yeah .  We had two options at this point. Keep working at using the motor or call BoatU.S. and get them to come and tow us off the sandbar. Yes Walt had already paid for a year of Boat U.S. knowing our history in the Carolina waterways.

How did we get free? It went something like this. Gary having brought his full body wet suit runs to put it on. He then proceeds to jump into the water which has to be pretty cold this time of year. We need to know the depths around TideChaser to know which way to go. Once he has figured it out Gary says to drop the anchor so out it goes. After determining where our deepest water was he picked up the anchor and moved it out to the deeper depth.  The tide was coming in at this point and had a pretty good current going. I was told to go to the anchor locker and be ready to electrically bring the anchor in when they give me the order. Ok here we go. The engines are turned and revved as the anchor is pulled in and it proceeds to pull the bow out away from the sandbar. YEAH. We are free. WE call the bridge and they will open anytime on holidays (and it is Thanksgiving for goodness sakes) so we head that way and so it goes for 3 more bridge openings as we travel down the ICW. At 11:00am we are out in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a beautiful sunny day and by 1pm we are in shorts and a tank tops. Now this is how we want to sail.

 List of things to get for TideChaser crew: full body wetsuit and snorkeling gear, nice spotlight flashlight and extra batteries and        Suction on cup holders and lots more to be added later.

We had a great Thanksgiving supper of garlic chicken, stuffed mushrooms and asparagus. All prepared by our Captain Gary. Very good, even though, it was going on 7:30pm the seas were starting to pick up again and my appetite was small. Walt did clean-up the dishes and took the first watch. It’s going to be another bumpy, windy night. Chris and I head to get a couple hours of sleep before our watch.

Answering peoples questions that we have gotten through e-mails:

1. For safety we have a satellite phone, a GPS epirb device and dingy with a 9 hp motor, lifejackets with tethering abilities and of course we now have our survival bag better known as a “ditch bag”.

2. Walt’s doing great not worrying about his hair. He has 2 hats a toboggan and his fishing hat. hehe  Love Juls