11/16/18 Friday: OK – this is getting ridiculous! 34 degrees?!? There is definitely a difference between the climate in the Florida panhandle, and southwest Florida where we live!
And again – the inside of the windows were dripping wet. But – outside was clear and sunny! YAY!!
We were even greeted by a playful pod of dolphins at sunrise in our little bayou. I actually got a fin or two in a picture! And yes – we did drag the anchors a little bit last night. We were not where we started before dark, but I think we stayed put in the spot where we dropped our anchor. Kenny and Wayne got ours retrieved, and thank goodness the weiner dog wash down hose was working. The chain was caked with mud. Our buddy boats got their anchors up, and away we all went for another long travel day.
Here is one of the boats on the shore here in our little lagoon. Notice how sparse and damaged the trees are looking?
It was cold. So cold that we couldn’t even roll up Captain’s windshield at the upstairs helm. So he, for the first time, drove with it all zipped down. The visibility isn’t as good, but it did stay much warmer up there with no breeze blowing through. The sun was shining and warm, so we all enjoyed the ride upstairs today. We saw a lot of hurricane devastation along the way. It seemed that Panama City was the northwestern edge of the damage. As we traveled south, we got into more and more of it.
Trees were broken off at all heights – just the top broke off in some, but a lot of them broke way down the trunk.
The “blue tarp” company sold a lot of inventory! Most roofs are blue here right now.
This just makes my heart hurt for these people! What a devastated mess!
We came across this salvage operation. This ship/ferry was laying on its side and there was quite the project going on to get it righted again.
More blue tarps.
At one point, the waterway became more of a river, winding it’s way through the cypress forest. It got pretty wide in some places and was very peaceful.
We were in the lead again, so here are our buddies tagging along.
We got to Apalachicola, and just cruised right on by. Earlier in the day, I suggested to the other boats that maybe we should just go all the way to Carrabelle today. We had just enough time to get there before dark, and if there was room at the marina, we’d have power and heat (YAY!) and shore showers. And, we’d be with the rest of the fleet that was planning to cross the Gulf on Saturday night. They all said that sounded good if we could get slips. So I called and as luck would have it, The Moorings had room for all three of us. So we cruised right on by Apalachicola and the anchorages that we had considered. This would now be an 86 mile day! It was sure a good thing that we started out at sunrise, so that we had the option to keep going!
Apalachicola only had one marina with fuel available, and I think that was really the only marina available for transients. Patty Parrot (Parrot Bay) tried and tried to get us slips, and nobody had room for us.
This is looking up Scipio Creek toward the marina.
We continued on to Carrabelle. About half way there from Apalachicola, around 3:00 in the afternoon, I got a call from Scipio Creek telling me that they had room for Island Girl. Well, that was a little too late. I thanked them, and told them that we were moving on. Soon we found ourselves at The Moorings in Carrabelle. It is one of two marinas that are taking transients, and they also had fuel which we all needed before crossing to Clearwater. So we fueled up and they found us each a slip. The marina lost a lot of dock space with the Hurricane, and there is still much clean up to do! We were in a skinny slip about one foot wider than our boat. Captain did an amazing job backing her in, and Wayne wins the piling lasso award. He makes it look so easy!!
This was in the boat yard at the Moorings. So sad! There is just junk, scrap, and storm mess everywhere.
Never the less, the sunset was beautiful behind Island Girl!
It was good to be docked and plugged into power for some heat! We all walked over to the Fisherman’s Wife Restaurant and had a nice meal. We talked with a few other boaters, and it sounded like there were at least 15 boats planning to make the crossing tomorrow night. Most will be traveling at 9mph, which is what we planned. We figured that we’d touch base with them again in the morning, since departure time would be after noon. In the meantime, we settled in for a nice WARM evening! And to celebrate some amazing news. When we were walking to dinner, I got a phone call from our youngest daughter in Washington State. She is pregnant…………
with TRIPLETS! 😳 OH MY! She said that she was glad we were doing this trip this year, because we might want to spend all next summer with them. WOW! Just WOW!