Overnight, again

We left Destin at dawn Monday morning. The anchor came up clean -quite an auspicious start. 500 yards into our trip to Panama City we went aground. A few days before we had watched, from the Destin boardwalk, the boats leaving the lagoon to get an idea of the course to use.Three boats left in the first half hour. All three went aground. One was a coast guard patrol boat. We did see a few make it out, but with a fearsome tide and having to parallel the bridge the successful captains were really gunning the engines.

We left at low tide so the current would sweep us away from the bridge and out to sea. Good plan, until we planted the boat in sand. The current heeled us over 20 degrees and with motor running we slowly bounced our way off and back into the lagoon. We turned around and made a second try, successfully this time. Of course the south ebbing tide met the swells from the south at the inlet and we got a great washing machine effect from the two opposing forces of water. We had 8 to10 foot breaking waves for about 100 yards. De Anne did a superb job of avoiding the biggest breakers.

Once the south wind rose we had a calm and relaxing sail towards Panama City, complete with several pods of dophins visiting us throughout the day and a sea turtle pacing us for about half an hour. The auto-pilot handled the steering and De Anne and I lolled in the cockpit watching the scenery and wildlife.

Novice skipper that I am, I failed the mental calculations of our actual speed with an arrival time in Panama City. No worries, a few hours of night sailing on a calm night with 2 foot seas didn't scare us after the experience of two weeks earlier. Then the wind died completely, and the fog rolled in. On with the motor and at 1:00am we lined up the markers into the Panama City cut. The boat speedo read 4.6 knots, but the chartplotter showed SOG (speed over ground) at 1.2 knots. It got worse the closer to the cut we got. Too much current, so we turned tail and ran. Next stop - Port St. Joe, about 40 miles down the coast.

We motored, at a slow 3 knots, through the night, in dense fog, relieving each other once an hour. We have found we prefer 45 minute naps to the more traditional 4 hour watches. Morning broke but the fog didn't. Finally, around 10:00am, just as we were looking for the first Port St.Joe marker the fog cleared. The bay was breath-taking. We could see the bottom 25 feet down. Miles of white sand beaches, untouched by any development. The camera just doesn't do justice to the view:


The Port St. Joe marina is clean, luxurious, and cheap! De Anne announced (after 3 rum and cokes - one over her limit) that we will stay here forever. Knowing my wife well, I am confident forever will end in 4 or 5 days.

The decerning reader of this blog will notice by now that we seldom end up where we plan to be. It gives real meaning to the phrase on our boat card "You're not lost if you don't care where you are."