Panama City to Carrabelle, Florida

November 29, 2001 - Panama City to Carrabelle, Florida

We left Panama City's Bay Point Marina at 7:00 in the morning. John had been up for an hour or so getting the boat ready to go while Captain Bill and Wendy slept in until 6:30. We didn't see anything of the city of Panama, as we didn't have a car and it was too far away to walk, so we just hung out at the boat. Funny thing, there still are very few people around the boat and restaurant areas - it's almost deserted. While leaving the pelicans perched on the markers called goodbye and the dolphins off our bow welcomed us to a beautiful morning on the Intracoastal. The sky is turning blue, but the water is kind of rough - much like a 2 to 3 foot Lake Michigan sea. We are headed to Carrabelle today - 75 miles away.

Here we are again - looking straight into the sun, trying to spot the channel markers - they all look black, and they are supposed to be red and green. It's important that we stay between them as there is shallow water at the edges and we surely don't want to run aground. After about 3 hours of tiresome looking into the sun on a fairly wide portion of the waterway, we entered a very narrow part and it looks very much like the Tenn Tom, with lots of little homes and fishing boats along the way.

It's calmer now and John is cleaning the windows again. Bev, you'll have to come back when he leaves as I know how much you like to wash windows - But, everyday, several times?????

I wonder when we will see alligators? OOPs, I just asked John and he said that alligators don't generally live in the salt water, so what do I know. We might see some in what they call "brackish" water, which is water that is a combination of sea and fresh water. I'll let you know when I see my first one.

A little while later I went out on the deck and discovered that we are on a rough Lake Michigan type water again - what a difference a day makes, or minute. Salt water is spraying all over John's clean windows again. Every several minutes things seem to change, so maybe this won't last too long.

It was a very long day as it turned out, even longer than we had planned. It was 86 miles and took 9 hours, AND, we had a time change that we hadn't bargained for. We are back on Eastern Standard Time again. We got in about 5:00 and, after getting diesel and a pump out and docking and cleaning the salt off the boat, we all got showered and went out to eat. We were told to have dinner at Julia Mays Fish Spot and we called them and they picked us up in their van and it was good. We'll explore this little town tomorrow and get organized for crossing the Gulf Saturday if the weather forecast is good enough. Word has it that some boats have been here for almost 2 weeks waiting for a couple of good days. Hope that doesn't happen to us. Stay tuned.

Now it's Friday the 30th and it's raining all day. We've been talking to all the boaters waiting to go somewhere and it seems that there isn't anyone going directly to Tarpon Springs, which we calculate is 150 miles across the gulf. We would like to get there because another front is supposed to come through over the weekend, so it seems best to go there directly. Right now we are thinking that we should leave about midnight tonight, so that we will arrive in Tarpon before dark tomorrow afternoon. The trip will be 15 hours. We are still going to talk to more boaters and listen to more forecasts before we decide for sure. I'd like to get this part of the trip behind us, as the Gulf waters are a little forbidding to me. There is a full moon this weekend, so we could have a beautiful crossing. Think good thoughts.