We anchored in Crystal River a couple weeks ago. We draw 4’8” and the advice we got from locals was to play the tides and try not to run the channel when it’s falling. There was a near-full moon so we also benefitted from slightly higher water and depth wasn’t a problem going in.
Keep in mind that low tide at Shell Island, where you first encounter land, can be almost an hour earlier than for King’s Bay and it’s the better part of an hour travel time between the two.
Without going into the gory details, we miscalculated the timing for our way out and ended up running the channel well before first light—as in 2 am—to make sure we had plenty of depth. The alternative would have been to wait for sufficient water after 11 am—too late for us to make Tarpon or Clearwater during daylight hours. The result was a comedy of errors but, after biting off all my fingernails, we inched our way past the entry markers at 4 am, found deeper water nearby and dropped anchor until there was light enough to see the myriad crab pots. It was an utterly calm night in the Gulf or we’d have never attempted this. However, the bottom is rock and the anchor never bit, so I dumped most of our chain and stayed awake watching the anchor alarm and making sure the shallow draft fishing boats leaving the channel in the dark saw us.
Re the advice above to circle the outer markers, some of the shallowest water we saw was near the entry markers. I was particularly warned to keep to the middle there.
We’d like to visit Crystal River without the drama sometime; it’s a beautiful area.
