2021 Platinum Great Loop

Day 207- Where is Shalimar?

karenstark

Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Temp: 85/68, Humidity: 49/92%, Top Wind: E5 mph, Precip: bright & sunny, Miles Traveled: 48

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I don’t believe that wind number… we had whitecaps coming at us, which means we had an East wind of around 11mph. Not that it’s a big deal, but sometimes I can’t get good statistics. 😏
We did get up with the alarm today so that we could get a move on. Here is another picture of the Palafox marina, which shows that most boats are just tied to docks around the perimeter of the basin. It really is in a great location to access town, so I’m sure glad they had a spot for us last night!

We went south out Pensacola Bay, then turned east and had the morning sun straight in our eyeballs. Wowza that was a lot of glare on the water! Break out the hats and sunglasses! We went past a very interesting kind of water park, with all kinds of floating slides and boinkers for jumping on.

Along the way, out on the spit of land between us and the Gulf, was this giant tall unidentified tower. It must be some kind of weather station, but I couldn’t find any information about it. It must do top secret squirrel 007 stuff.

I got a text from our daughter in Spokane Washington that they had 32 degrees this morning, and it was time to dig out the Halloween leggings. I teased her with this picture, and told her that my Halloween leggings are the same as my 4th of July leggings. 😉. Standard issue Florida boating duds.

We tootled past lots and LOTS of sand dunes between us and the Gulf. It’s so pretty, I just wanted to get in a car and drive along the beach out there! Soon enough, I’ll get to go to our own Siesta Key Beach. I’m so ready!! I really miss the beach, the warm Gulf water, the relaxation.

We went past the free dock at Fort Walton that I originally thought we might stay at. Eek! Since it is hot and I had made plans to stay at a marina, I had not read the reviews. The dock was damaged in the storms and is no longer available for overnight dockage. It looked ok, but there were signs saying the docks close at 10:00pm – no overnight allowed. 😬 We continued on into Choctawhatchee Bay (Choc-taw-HATCH-ee, not Choc-ta-WHACH-ee … the W is silent 🤫). We turned north and found our destination: Two Georges Marina. We meandered in to the fuel dock and took on just 100 gallons of diesel, got our slip assignment for tonight, and got all backed into the slip. We are back in the land of fixed docks! We haven’t done these for awhile and we were a little rusty on our procedure. But we got in and settled without any issues. We didn’t leave the boat all afternoon, because there is no place to go! We’re kind of isolated in a residential area, so we just relaxed. I finally went outside just to walk a little bit. Lo and behold, there was a giant video commercial playing on a big screen at the outside end of our dock! 😳. I think it’s a big electronic reader board on a boat that tootles around advertising, kind of like the airplanes that fly around with banners advertising stuff. Weird! It really caught my attention, that’s for sure!

There were dozens of fishing boats here – these are just a few on the shoreline dock by us.

We’ve been rocked and rolled a little bit, since there’s no breakwater between the marina and the bay. We had a beautiful sunset out the back window, facing directly west.

Saturday is still looking good. You can’t read the numbers, but you can see that the blue bars on the graph are short inside the pink outline. That’s Saturday. The top section is the north section of our voyage near Carrabelle. The bottom section is the south end of the voyage near Clearwater. Winds are less than 10, and waves are less than 2. I’m praying it stays that way! We got on the interweb and requested a weather summary and voyage synopsis from Chris Parker’s Marine Weather Center. He does personalized weather routing and information for a fee, and we’ve heard excellent reviews from friends who have used his services. We should get some information from him tomorrow and again on Friday about the expected conditions on Saturday.

In the meantime, we’ll be hitting the road to move along another 70-ish miles tomorrow to Panama City. This shows our week: 1) Mobile Bay, 2) Gulf Shores, 3)Pensacola, 4)BLUE DOT is us at Shalimar today. Where we’re going: 5) Panama City, 6)Apalachicola, and 7) is Carrabelle. So now you sort of know where Shalimar is. Like it’s something you’ve always wanted to know, right? HA! 😁

Day 206- We made it to Florida!!

karenstark

Monday, October 11, 2021
Temp: 81/70, Humidity: 69/92%, Top Wind: SE8 mph, Precip: bright & sunny, Miles Traveled: 33

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It was a short, late start kind of day today, so we got to sleep in! Ha! Like that’ll happen. We were awake with the sun again, but at least we didn’t HAVE to get up. It was already toasty outside, and looking like a normal Gulf of Mexico Autumn kind of day. What a difference from November 2018 when it was raining and cold and so much humidity that we couldn’t keep the INSIDE of the windows dry when we were underway.
This shows just a glimpse of why Lulu’s is such a popular destination for families. Check out that ropes course!

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Day 205- Gulf Shores! Salt Air!

karenstark

Sunday, October 10, 2021
Temp: 84/65, Humidity: 54/94%, Top Wind: SE10 mph, Precip: bright & sunny, Miles Traveled: 42

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It is so strange and I cannot even begin to explain it. Today feels like we’re home. Or at least almost. Both of us feel a huge psychological difference being on the salt water. We saw dolphins, seagulls, and Island Girl sits higher in the water and lifts better when we go fast. She likes it. We like it. And we are seriously only like ONE WEEK of travel days away from really being HOME! That is crazy!! And we’re ready.

Neither of us slept very well last night. It was really warm and humid, and we were right on the port shipping channel, so we were rocked a lot!. But it was worth it to be here in Mobile and be done with the rivers, and have those miles behind us. You can barely tell in this picture, but just below the red pointer indicating where we were docked, Interstate 10 goes right under the river! So we were docked almost on top of the freeway. That’s weird.

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Day 204- The end of the river section!

karenstark

Saturday, October 9, 2021
Temp: 85/64, Humidity: 47/95%, Top Wind: Ne6 mph, Precip: FOG, cloudy, sunny, Miles Traveled: 122!!, Number of Locks: 1, – THE LAST ONE!!

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It was another early morning get up. We slept really good here on the dock at Bobby’s. No logs bonking our hull, we had air conditioning, it was very peaceful and dark outside. I should have gone out to look at the stars, but I’m always afraid of letting in too many skeeters that will consume all of Kenny’s blood. We had a beautiful morning pre-sunrise. There wasn’t any fog on the water. David had called the lock around 6:00, requesting a 7:00 lock through. The lockmaster didn’t answer the phone. Finally after several tries, he called on the radio. The lockmaster told him to call back at 6:30. Huh?🤔. That was weird. But, OK.

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Day 203-97 miles down the rivah

karenstark

Friday, October 8, 2021
Temp: 84/61, Humidity: 48/100%, Top Wind: N6 mph, Precip: FOG, cloudy, sunny, Miles Traveled: 97, Number of Locks: 1, which should have been a 40’ drop, but was really only about 25?!

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The most exciting thing that happened today was that we were the only two boats that stopped at Bobby’s Fish Camp, so we both got to be plugged in to power. YAY! But first, we we had a lock and some fog to go through. I was up at 5:45 to look outside. There was a bit of fog, but it didn’t look terrible. David texted at 6:00 to let us know that the lock was good for us to proceed for a 7:00 transit through. Alrighty then – let’s get with it! We untied and cast off at 6:40 to tootle our way the 2.5 miles down to the lock.

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Day 202-The good, bad, and ugly

karenstark

Thursday, October 7, 2021
Temp: 82/65, Humidity: 57/100%, Top Wind: NE4 mph, Precip: FOG, cloudy, sunny, Miles Traveled: 50, Number of Locks: none

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I actually slept pretty good last night. I woke up several times with bonks against the hull, but I didn’t stay awake long. Captain didn’t sleep quite as well, worrying about his ship and all. We were both awake at daybreak to see that there was plenty of fog outside. Grrr 😠 That’s not good because we won’t travel in fog unless we absolutely have to. The good thing was that we only had fifty miles to go today and no locks, so we didn’t have to. David called to see what we were thinking, and was relieved to hear that we were thinking about just sitting here awhile until it cleared up. We anticipated that it would get thicker as the sun came up, and then it would burn off, and that is exactly what it did.

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Day 201- Plans A & B on Tombigbee

karenstark

Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Temp: 81/67, Humidity: 67/100%, Top Wind: E4 mph, Precip: cloudy, sunny, Miles Traveled: 70, Number of Locks: One more than planned! 3 total with a total drop of 91’ (27,27,36)

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The alarm was set for 5:45. I was up before 5:30 and checked the weather and the Lock Queue report. Things looked pretty good! As planned, David on She’s The One telephoned the lock. then he came over to tell me what he found out. Everything was cleared for take-off, so we got ourselves ready for a 7:00 departure. We were over achievers. Ha! Go figure! We left the dock at 6:42. 🤭 STO followed us out. They are going to follow us today, after a big long discussion about how to get better fuel economy. Plus, they’d like to follow us into what ever anchorage we go to today.

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Day TWO HUNDRED!

karenstark

Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Temp: 80/65, Humidity: 70/100%, Top Wind: NE9 mph, Precip: clouds, mostly sun! THEN ⚡️⛈ after dark, Miles Traveled: just a few to town in a loaner car

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When I got up this morning, I was surprised that I had not heard any rain yet. Today was forecasted to be 100% chance of rain for most of the day, and that’s why we planned to stay here today. It was quite pleasant looking outside. WHAT?! I checked the forecast, and it was way better than when we went to bed last night. Great. Did we just waste one whole perfectly good travel day? Geeze.

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Day 199- Midway to Columbus

karenstark

Monday, October 4, 2021
Temp: 80/69, Humidity: 77/100%, Top Wind: S2 mph, Precip: foggy, cloudy, some sun, Miles Traveled: 60,
Number of locks: 4, down 107 feet (25,25,30,27)

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Our first of four locks today, the Fulton Lock, was only three miles from the marina, so I planned to get up and call the lock on the phone to check traffic. The wifi and cell service here has been slow, plus the USACE Lock Queue website has been really slow to non-responsive. So, I was awake at 5:00. 🙄Really?! That’s what I thought too! Oh brother! So I got up and checked the weather first, and naturally as things go, it was predicting FOG until 9:00. 😩 Well that isn’t good! I waited until about 5:45 to break the news to the Captain. However, I could see the lights in the darkness from the lock down the river, so the fog wasn’t terrible yet. I finally got the lock queue report to pull up, and it showed two tows were upbound that had come through the Wilkins Lock, which is fifteen miles farther downriver. That means they could be arriving at our lock and delaying progress. What to do, what to do? Captain says ‘we’re not going in fog again!’ I agree – it is way too stressful on the rivers with barges. As it started to get light out, it didn’t look bad. But that’s what happened to us at Cuba Landing: everything looked fine until we got out on the river and the sun came up, then it socked in really bad. What to do, what do? We were thinking that we should get ready to go anyway, just in case the other boats peeled out, we’d be ready to go with them. Then, at about 6:50, Tom on Maggie Jo called on the phone and said that one of the boats on the fuel dock had talked with the lockmaster, and there were tows coming down, and tows going up, so if we wanted to get through, we needed to come right away, otherwise we’d be here all day. That sealed the deal – we were outta this joint at 6:59.

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Day 197 & 198-Locking down the TennTom

karenstark

Saturday, October 2, 2021
Temp: 78/70, Humidity: 77/93%, Top Wind: S5 mph, Precip: cloudy, some rain, Miles Traveled: 56,
Number of locks: 3, down 144 feet (84,30,30)
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It was a muggy warm day, with rain while in a lock. Yup. I got wet. But first, let’s go back to the most beautious sunrise start for today! This is the for-real colors. I didn’t do anything to this picture, it’s 100% God’s gift of art. Good morning Saturday!

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