Fort Myers to Corpus Christi

Slowing down a bit to conserve fuel, you can make it from Clearwater across to Carabelle in one long day. At 12 knots you're talking around 13 hours.

From there you can run outside to Gulfport or actually Bay St. Louis is a good stop. You can take how many ever days work for you as plentiful fuel and dockage.

Your next major obstacle is Louisiana. I'd take the ICW through New Orleans with your speed and range. That solves the fuel problem there. So I'm saying Gulfport to New Orleans and out at Sabine Pass. There is fuel availability and dockage on that route. Then outside again.

At your cruising speed, running inside through Louisiana isn't going to cost you that much time vs. the route outside. Only real potential negative is locks and having to wait for commercial traffic.

And you're correct with the shortage of marinas on the route.

Last time we came back that way we went outside at Mobile Bay all the way to Galveston, but that was in a sailboat. If you stick to the Fairways there are no rigs to worry about. You can get fuel in Venice, La and then again up the Sabine River to Sabine Lake. Check out Active Captain for details.

You can get an idea about the traffic by using the MarineTraffic website here: http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-89/centery:30/zoom:8

I have done that very same trip around 4 times. Once you get to Carabelle you are going to WANT to run the inside. Once you get West of Carabelle it is usually a long run from a marina to good water where you can head West and usually another long run back in an inlet to a marina. Basically you'll be wasting 40% of you day going to and from deep water that you can travel West in especially LA. Also every outside passage is going to be at or outside of your range. The Intracoastal from Carabelle West, you can run at cruise for about 85% of it and it's more of a straight shot, no short bridges you have to wait for etc. I've done Corpus Christi to Fort Lauderdale in 14 days in a 16 knot 44' boat before travelling daylight hours only. I did it in 15 days of travel time from Fort Lauderdale to Corpus Christi in a 10 knot trawler most recently and only on the inside from Carabelle West. I would also figure out a way to carry another 50-100 gallons of fuel, even if it's in portable fuel tanks or 55 gallon drums. Fuel stops are few and far between on that trip.

Get to Clearwater, from there to Carabelle is 160NM. Stop in Carabelle. I can't remember exact stops I made for each trip unless I went back and looked. One of them I did Pascagoula MS to Panama City Marina in a day at 16 knots (on the outside). Usually I did Carabelle to Panama City to Pensacola to Biloxi to New Orleans (seabrooke marina on the east side of Mississippi) to Morgan City to Intracoastal City to Lake CHarles to forgetting one, and I think I anchored near a refinery on this leg 1 night, then Galveston or Freeport then Matagorda, then Corpus. Dozier's waterway guide (Southern) has a lot of info. Fuel on the ICW is few and far between, about every 75-90 miles.....

What engines do you have? If you slow it down to hull speed and 1000 rpms or (1200 rpms on 6-71's)......you'll at least double your range if not triple it.

Well, your options are limited given your range and speed. If you have 2 Captains, they should have charts and a cruising guide and be able to chart every single leg of your journey and tell you what each leg is. I do lots of deliveries to places I've never been to, I pick up a chart and a cruising guide, and plot a course. That is what a Captain does. All of the trips I've done over there were deliveries, given your range,boats age, and speed, I would take the inside. It can also get rough real quick in the gulf.

If you're boat had a safe 250NM range and over 20 knot cruise speed, I'd be thinking differently....Otherwise get a couple of 55 gallon drums and a transfer pump,. and do a long straight shots doing hull speed at night but I would definately want a 100% working autopilot for that........ The last trip over there I did was a 78' crew boat 16.5 knot cruise but it had almost a 1000 NM range at cruise and I had a crew of 3 total. I did pascagoula to Panama City, then a straight shot overnight from Panama City to Ft. Myers (boca Grande).

Marine Traffic actually has good offshore coverage in the area that I linked to. It's at least 60-miles-offshore-coverage from Panama City Beach and west. The reason I linked to Marine Traffic was because Gerdie wanted to know if commercial traffic is above average compared to other areas. I thought she could look at el grande mosaic on Marine Traffic, and then she would have an idea of what all that crap is on her radar when she gets to the commercial-high-traffic areas.

Above average is hard to say. However, there is a lot of commercial traffic at times. You have traffic up and down both the Tombigbee and the Mississippi. On top of that you have considerable commercial traffic servicing the oil industry. A lot of that runs from Gulfport and from Louisiana. So it's definitely a commercial area. How much you encounter is often just timing.