Oct & Nov 2016

Crossing the mouth of Mobile Bay, with the oil/gas
production platforms in the distance.  Back in
familiar territory.

So, we landed at the Wharf Marina in Orange Beach for the winter.  Now what?

Well, just a few days later, we jumped back on a ferry boat that runs across the mouth of Mobile Bay, on our way to New Orleans to retrieve our car, and to visit our son & his family.  Our car had been left for the summer with a good friend in the Power Squadron, and he did a good job of washing it every week.

I could look at this all day.

We made our drive up to Chattanooga to care for Sue’s mother, who is a spry 94 years young.  She’s already looking forward to the week of Thanksgiving, when we have a family reunion in the area, so she can see her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren (5 generations!).

Back at the boat, this Wharf Marina is located amongst a condo complex, a shopping area, outdoor amphitheater, movie theaters, restaurants, and a small amusement area which includes a big big ferris wheel.  Their “main street” has a line of palm trees down the length, which is the center of the nightly light & sound show.  Three times each night, a 15-minute show stops everyone in their tracks to gawk at the professionally-done presentation.  “We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto!”

At the BBQ competition, these smokers were huge,
and the pecan wood was sliced carefully into
wafers & cured carefully.

The Wharf also becomes the location of major events, like the World Food Championship this past weekend.  Over 400 cooking teams came from all around the country, as well as Canada, to compete in cooking various dishes.  Their “kitchens” were set up under a giant tent, with each kitchen (about 40 of them) containing a refrig, microwave oven, electric oven, electric grill, charcoal grill, warming oven, plus a multitude of small electric appliances.  Having been an engineer, I wondered how the heck they’re providing power to all these appliances out here in the middle of a field.  So I just had to find all the generators, distribution panels, and huge power cables leading into the tent (some good traits are hard to leave behind).

At the exit of the Food Festival was this huge box of,
appropriately, Tums antacid.

Two Great Blue Herons have taken over whatever they
want in this marina.  This one is drying its wings
in the morning sun.

Now we pack up for a 10-day trip back to Chattanooga, to take care of dentist appointments, take care of personal family issues, and to list all the things for which we are thankful.  Sue is on her way back from a week trip into Texas, to take care of some other family issues.  This is one of those months where the boat is enjoying its stay at a very nice marina, yet we’re actually home only 10 days out of the month!

Beware !!!

Between Panama City & Ft Walton Beach
the cypress stumps are evidence of salt water intrusion

Hide all the young children and small pets!!!  We have arrived in Orange Beach AL at our winter marina – The Wharf Marina!

The canal is a narrow cut through sand dunes.
Boaters call it the "grand canyon" of Florida

After spending our one night in Panama City Marina, our fantastic weather continued as we motored west.  The cool temperatures were low enough that, for the first time this summer, we were able to shut off the genset and air conditioning, in favor of opening windows to catch the cool breeze.  We wanted to anchor for a couple nights before we put the boat to bed for the winter, trying out some anchorages to which we haven’t been.  In Choctawhatchee Bay, we took a detour a couple miles off the ICW to anchor in a nice cove next to Niceville FL and Eglin AFB.  It would have offered good wind & wave protection in a storm, as it was surrounded by homes and private boat docks.

This big boy wanted to pass before we got into the
narrow channel passing Ft Walton Beach

The next day we had another uneventful trip (the best kind of trip to have on a boat!) to an anchorage on the east end of Perdido Key, just west of Pensacola Inlet.  We were able to get within 300’ of the shore of the barrier island, which consisted of a National Park area covered by sand dunes and scrub brush.  We were so close that we could see a couple hundred yards across the island to the Gulf of Mexico on the other side.   It was a fantastic anchorage, except for the 15-20 mph north wind, which caused a moderate chop and prevented us from swimming to shore.

Near Navarre Beach, we see a water park set up along
the ICW shore.  When you click to enlarge the photo,
you'll be pleased to see the McDonalds's in the center
of the picture.

But we did find ourselves firing up the grill, listening to some Jimmy Buffet music, and mixing some dynamite frozen mango daiquiris.  We spent two nights at that anchorage, partly because we enjoyed it so much, and partly because we knew that it was our last night of cruising for this year.

View from our last anchorage.  You can see the
Gulf waters across the dunes.

Sunset at our anchorage

Grilling redfish, listening to Buffet, enjoying a glass
of wine.  Don't get much mo' betta.

Approaching Perdido Pass, the pirate ship comes
towards us.  I thought we were in trouble, until
I saw all the tourists on deck!

So finally on October 4, we went west a bit more to The Wharf Marina where we’ll stay for this winter.  This marina is part of a large complex which includes condos, shopping, restaurants, amusements and a large movie complex.  The marina is offering a super deal for members of AGLCA (the “Loopers”) to spend the winter.  It’s close enough to New Orleans for us to see our family there, and close to Pensacola for us to see what the Navy is up to. 

Adding up all our travels this season, we traveled just over 2200 miles – all at 10 mph!  We’re glad to be here in Orange Beach, but our concern now is that bad guy named Hurricane Matthew.  It’s headed for our friends on Florida’s east coast, and looks like it will do considerable damage to the places that we were at, just a short month ago.  We’re hoping for the best for them.

And then, next week we drive to New Orleans to retrieve our car, to tend to doctor appointments, and to let the Admiral get her “Oma fix” with our granddaughter.  The week after that, we head north to Chattanooga for dental appointments and to tend to Sue’s mother.  We obviously need to keep moving so we can stay ahead of all our mistakes!

My sentiments exactly!

Crawling Westward

We waited for the first cold front to pass before we departed Apalachicola on Thursday.  Besides, the Admiral had eaten plenty enough oysters by then!

Instead of "Red, right, return", it must be
"white, right, return" with all the pelican crap

Our travel that day was very easy & relaxing.  No low bridges to open, no locks to pass through, no tows with barges to negotiate passing, no 95 degrees with no breeze on the helm.  Just a winding river through the Florida cypress swamps and a bit of open water.  We’re looking forward to cruising in this cool weather, after spending all summer in south Florida.  We want to anchor for a couple nights next to Pensacola Beach & the sand dunes, but we don’t want to join the crowds on weekends.  So we’re taking our time heading west, which is unusual for us; we are usually pushing to get somewhere.

We wanted to go into Panama City marina for fuel – they are selling ValvTect diesel fuel for only $2.09 if you spend the night with them (for which they offer another discount for BoatUS).  But we didn’t want to get to the marina late in the day, so we chose an anchorage in a cove just south of town, which we had heard about 4 years ago.  Turned in to a great spot, surrounded by Tyndall AFB, so it was deserted.

A pelican feeding frenzy right in front of our boat.
Note the pelican diving into the water at top of photo.
(click to enlarge)

And then, after a big breakfast and a late start today, we traveled a whole 1.6 miles across the bay to the marina.  Last week we traveled 162 miles crossing the Gulf in one day, so I think today wins the prize for least miles traveled.

We’ll anchor for 3 more nights before arriving at The Wharf Marina in Orange Beach AL.  We kinda hate to end our cruising for the year, so we’ll try to enjoy the next few days.

3rd Time is a Charm

On the ICW passing St Pete Beach, we see the
historic Don Cesar Hotel

Our third time to cross the Big Bend part of the GOM was a piece of cake, especially compared to the first time we crossed in 2013.

A beautiful sunrise, somewhere over the northern
Gulf of Mexico

We left St Pete Municipal Marina Friday morning, a calm, sunny (and hot) day.  We passed north of the Sunshine Skyway, near Pinellas Point, and the area where Sue spent her teenage years.  Brought back a lot of memories.  We stayed on the ICW inside rather than cruising just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, even though we had a lot of no-wake zones, and several bridges to have raised.  We figured that we’d have enough open water cruising the following day.  We found the ICW channel north of Clearwater to be only 9’ deep at low tide, and at times, only 100’ wide!

We anchored for the night near Anclote Key, off Tarpon Springs, in a rather exposed anchorage.  The winds stayed N 10-15 all night, so the boat swung at anchor quite a bit & the waves were noisy slapping against the hull.  But we needed a quick easy departure route the next morning.

Talk about getting out of bed at zero-dark-thirty!!  I haven’t done that since my college days!  We turned on our spotlight in order to have enough light on the bow to raise & wash the anchor & chain.  As we got underway at 0400, we kept the spotlight on to help avoid any crab pots in our path.  Instead, we saw numerous seagulls just ahead, using our light to catch their early breakfast.  Using our radar & chartplotter, we inched our way into deeper open water.  That day, we used the radar extensively, first to locate the channel markers and other boats out early, and later in the day to keep track of the rain storms in the Gulf.

This was all we saw for about 15 hours of our 16 hour trip.
Note how calm the waters are!  Just what the Admiral
ordered!

As we headed across 150 miles of open water, the 1-2’ seas on our starboard quarter made for a moderately uncomfortable ride.  We were still able to engage “Otto the Pilot” (our autopilot), but we were hoping that the seas would lie down to what the weather forecast said.  After 5 hours, the wind finally got a hold of the forecast, and laid down to almost nothing.  The last half of the trip, we had basically flat calm seas – just what the Admiral wanted to see.

It was mostly an uneventful trip, exactly the kind we like to have.  We saw many dolphins along the way, usually coming to the boat to jump in our wake.  A special treat was sighting a huge sea turtle, maybe 5-6’ long & several hundred pounds.  We saw it about 150’ from the boat shortly before it dived under water, but we think it was a loggerhead turtle.  Then, as we approached 20 miles from our destination, we started seeing monarch butterflies all around the boat.  We heard later that the Apalachicola-Carrabelle area is on the migration route for the monarchs.

A bald eagle looking for lunch, right next to our dock
in Apalach.

We finally entered East Pass just before sunset (right as planned), then found an anchorage behind Dog Island and dropped the hook in twilight.  It was a long 16 hours under way, but we both felt that a day crossing is much mo’ betta than the two previous night crossings.  A nice touch the following morning after a good night’s sleep, was having our coffee on the back deck, enjoying the much cooler morning breeze, and watching the brown pelicans diving for breakfast into a school of fish not more than 100’ away from our boat.  They were so close that we could hear their splash, and so numerous that sometimes 3 of them hit the water simultaneously – synchronized pelican diving!!

We’re now back in Apalach, where we spent a couple days earlier this year.  The Admiral had to eat more ersters & find her craft beer brewery.  She already had esters for dinner last night, and again this morning.  We’ll suffer through this another couple days before departing for points west.  A nice cold front is coming through this week, and we want to anchor a couple nights in the cool weather.  In less than a week, we’ll put our boat to bed for a long winter’s nap.

Walking in Apalachicola, we see many monarch butterflies

"I'll get you yet, my little pretty!"

Crossing Florida’s Big Bend – for the 3rd time

One of the most “adventurous” parts of our cruising (read: “pain in the butt”) is having to cross the NE corner of the Gulf of Mexico from somewhere near Clearwater to somewhere near Apalachicola.  Because we’re a slow boat (yes, Clint, we’re still a “crawler”), the trip takes us 16-19 hours. 

The first two times we crossed, we made an overnight crossing.  But even though our last crossing this past spring was under very nice weather (read: minimal wind & waves), the entire journey was waaaaaaaay too long for us.  I guess that we’re just not quite the young chickens that we once were.  So for this crossing this coming weekend, we’ll try to keep the trip to a “reasonable” 16 hours.

This crossing is heavily dependent on a good weather window, and our window opens tomorrow for 2 days.  So we’ll leave St Pete downtown marina tomorrow morning & cruise as far north as we can before starting the 160 mile crossing.  We’re planning to anchor behind Anclote Key, just west of Tarpon Springs, and then start off Saturday about 4 AM to make a daytime crossing.  At the other end, just as soon as we come in to Dog Island (just south of Carrabelle), we’ll anchor again, hopefully right at sunset.  It sounds like a good plan, providing the crab pots are not planted all around Tarpon Springs like a minefield.

A restaurant where we are rarely seen -
Ruth's Chris Steak House!

On Sunday, we’ll go into Apalachicola Marina for a couple days, so the Admiral can find her Oyster City Brewery & get caught up on all their craft beers.  After that, we’ll start meandering westward towards Alabama.

Our “last supper” here in St Pete will be with Mike & Louise (Sue’s brother-in-law) to celebrate Louise’s birthday.  Should be a surprise for her & we’ll end up at a good New Orleans-based restaurant chain called Ruth’s Chris Steak House.  After that, it’s peanut butter sandwiches for a couple days!

Back to St Pete

Before leaving Ft Myers, we searched for
our Pot o' Gold

Only this time, we’re at the Municipal Marina right downtown.

We made a 3-day trip from Ft Myers to St Pete, still planning on thunderstorms each afternoon.  We traveled only 50-60 miles each day, so we could be anchored for the night by the time the T-storms passed by.  But our luck held, and we didn’t even get a free boat wash the entire trip.

click to enlarge

We anchored the first night at Englewood Beach – our third time to anchor there.  It’s a nice protected spot, but mainly it fits nicely into our travel route.  And the sand bottom allows us to set the anchor well for the night, yet raise it easily the next morning, and the anchor comes up nice & clean.

The main feature of our trip was the constant presence of dolphins next to our boat.  They must really like our 10 mph travel speed.  At times, we had dolphins on both sides of our boat, riding our wake, jumping high & smacking down into the water, swimming on their side looking up at us, and entertaining the Admiral for miles and miles.  We got great pictures.

Look closely and you can see the splash from one dolphin
with its tail still our of the water.  Another one is just starting
to jump out of the water.

An osprey sitting on the "high ground"

Entering Tampa Bay, your hard-earned tax dollars are
at work.  USCG replacing a piling to mark the channel of
the Intracoastal Waterway

The second night we anchored in the Manatee River next to Bradenton, a place where we had anchored 3 years ago.  The weather was nice, so we inflated a swimming ring, tied it to the boat (so the tidal current wouldn’t take us to China) & jumped in to the 86 degree water to “cool off”.  It must be summertime in Florida.

Sunshine Skyway looks a lot like the bridge
over Mackinac Straits in Michigan

At a roof top restaurant in St Pete, we see the
approaching rain squall over Tampa Bay

Our 3^rd travel day was a short trip under the Sunshine Skyway, up Tampa Bay to the City Marina in St Petersburg.  Sue lived in St Pete when she was a teenager, and back then, the city was called “The land of the newly-wed and the living dead” and “God’s waiting room”.  The downtown area has been totally re-vitalized to the point that Sue almost doesn’t recognize anything.  The water front looks great, there are lots of green spaces downtown & the shops and restaurants cater to the locals as well as the tourists.  During the entire month of September, they’re celebrating an Arts & Culture Festival, so we’re checking out some art museums & theater shows.  This meek & humble Deck Ape will be so “cultured” that the Admiral won’t recognize me!

Next to the Fine Arts Museum, a huge tree that's even
older than I am!

On a tour of the historic Vinoy Hotel in St Pete,
we see something strange hanging on the wall.
Never did figure out what the heck this was!

Built in 1925, the Vinoy Hotel has been a landmark in
downtown St Pete.

Next to the Museum of Fine Arts, two huge banyan trees
shade the street.  Sue is holding some new tree roots
growing DOWN to the ground.

So now we take a break from all our fun to fly to Ohio for a wedding & to meet with the attorney to begin probate of Sue’s uncle’s estate.  When we return next week, we’ll provision the boat & start looking for a weather window to make a 15-hour Gulf of Mexico crossing of the “Big Bend” part of Florida.

As part of the Arts & Culture Festival, there have been
a lot of mural paintings on the sides of buildings

Be careful exiting this door

Just had to have one of Salvator Dali & his wife Gala

A Quick Dash Across Florida

Well, for a trawler moving at only 9-10 mph, the “quick dash” turns in to a 4-day trip!

While in Daytona Beach, we break bread & tell sea
stories with our Power Squadron friends
Don & Becky, who used to live in the New Orleans area.

We had to stay in Daytona Beach (yeah, I know, it’s a tough life) for 4 days longer than planned because of the tropical system that eventually became Hurricane Hermine.  The crazy thing came past Florida the first time just south of Miami, then stalled when it entered the Gulf, and finally turned back northeast to cross Florida again around Tallahassee.  Since we had no idea where this thing was headed (and the weather guessers didn’t know either), we had to “mark time” in a safe harbor in case our winds kicked up.

Finally on Saturday Sept 3, we planned our get-away.  The hurricane had cleared the area, but the weather pattern had settled into the typical Florida summer weather – 60% thunderstorms every afternoon.  Now, it’s bad enough being out on the water when the winds gust to 50 mph, but when those lightning bolts start lighting up the sky, you don’t really want to be the tallest thing in the area!  So even though the forecast called for 60% T-storms for the next 3 days, we rolled the dice & headed south. 

It was a 4-day trip for us from Daytona Beach to Ft Myers, and 3 of those days required us being under way for 9-10 hours, with one day getting under way from anchor before sunrise.  For 3 of those days, we somehow managed to stay just barely ahead of passing T-storms (sometimes by only 1-2 miles).  But on the 4^th day, our luck ran out, and we were in rain showers for the entire 7 hour trip.  (Hey Clint…we would have called you as we passed your old stompin’ grounds along the Caloosahatchee River, but it was raining so hard that we could barely see the next channel marker).  So we got a free boat wash that day – several times!

In addition to dodging the T-storms, we also had to co-ordinate our travel with the schedules of the 5 locks along the Okeechobee Waterway (OWW).  One in particular, had openings only 3 times each day, and you’d better not be late!  Most of the locks had a lift or drop of less than 10’, but on these locks, the water is let in or out via the lock doors, instead of like most USACE locks which have side underwater valves.  This method creates extreme turbulence inside the lock, which caused us to lose control 3 years ago when we first came through this way.  That day, our boat actually turned sideways in the lock due to the turbulence.

On a more pleasant note, one of the cool things about running south along the east coast in the Indian River was seeing all the dolphins.  Many times, there were dolphins playing in our wake alongside the boat, and at one time, Sue counted 6 dolphins all in our wake at once.  They were jumping sideways out of the water & landing with a loud smack, they were rolling around each other as they surfed our wake, and several times the young dolphin would be nudged by its parent as they all were swimming with us.  They entertained Sue for quite a while.

The other humorous item was the text we received from our sail boating friends Bill & Jeanie, who we traveled with 2 years ago in the Chesapeake Bay, and are still there.  Two years ago, we all had a hurricane pass the Chesapeake about 100 miles offshore.  It was Bill & Jeanie’s first experience with a hurricane (since they were originally from Chicago & Detroit & a bit nervous), but since Sue & I were from New Orleans, we brought the rum & showed them how a Hurricane Party works!  So last week, Hurricane Hermine leaves Florida & heads right up the Chesapeake at Bill & Jeanie, who texted us to say “I’ll bet if you guys were here, we’d be having another Hurricane Party!”

So now we’ve been in Ft Myers, one of our favorite cities, for the past 2 days, planning to depart tomorrow on a 3-day trip to St Petersburg Municipal Marina downtown.  This will be our 3^rd time to travel along this neck of the woods, so things are getting kinda commonplace.  We have our anchorages already picked out, with alternates if we get caught by T-storms again.  Once we get to St Pete, we’ll leave the boat to fly to Ohio for about a week.  When we return mid-September, we’ll make our final travel to our winter marina in Orange Beach AL.

Watching the Tropics

Just before we left Marineland, we see 3 manatees
swim into the marina cove.  This is one coming
up to breathe.

It must be summertime in Florida, or is it just Hurricane Season?

Our weather had been just about perfect for the past 3 weeks – nice east breeze off the ocean, sunny (but warm), with no rain at all.  Great cruising weather, but we had paid for a month stay at Marineland Marina.  So the middle of last week we “make all necessary preparations for getting underway” (as the Navy used to say) to start our trip to the west side of Florida, and wouldn’t you know it!  Here comes our tropical system Invest 99L, crawling across the Caribbean heading just north of Miami.

Another manatee coming up for air (nose on the left).
The swirls to his left are evidence of the other 2 having
just dove back down after breathing. (click to enlarge)
The white marks on his back are injuries from a
boat propeller.  These guys are slow moving.

So we discuss whether to move the boat north to Jacksonville to avoid the storm, or south to Daytona Beach.  Either way, we better leave Marineland, cause this is not a good place to ride out a hurricane.  After a couple days of watching its track, and talking daily to our friend Don in Daytona Beach (who is a retired Navy meteorologist), we predict that it could make landfall just south of Miami as a CAT 1 or less, and we head to Daytona Beach marina.

We make the 35 mile trip south last Thursday, with an uneventful trip UNTIL we ran aground just north of Daytona.  It took a couple moments to realize we were aground (rather than stopped by our props getting tangled by something), as I’m racing around below deck, throwing open hatches to check for water in the bilges and prop shaft packing.  We were stuck tight – not moving at all – and the tide was falling!  I tried calling TowBoatUS, but after 5 minutes on hold, we decided to try to unstick ourselves.  By increasing power in reverse, and by churning up the sand & mud beneath us, we were finally able to back off the shoal.  After limping into the Daytona Beach marina, we called a diver to inspect our keel and running gear.  Luckily, there was no damage.

So now we get back to the approaching tropical system & try to plan our departure as soon as it passes.  Wouldn’t you know that the thing meanders into the Gulf of Mexico & then decides to turn NE back across Florida.  Looks like we’ll be waiting for this thing until the end of this week.  In the meantime, we’ll put out extra lines, batten down the hatches & get ready to hunker down.  I’m sure there’s a hurricane party going on somewhere!

NEWS FLASH: Granddaughter Wears Out Grandparents!

How did we ever have the energy to raise 3 kids, when just one granddaughter completely wears us out in a week?!?  But, you gotta admit…we totally spoiled her rotten before giving her back to her parents!

She learned some new things the week with us, like body surfing in the breaking waves of the ocean shore; like high tide & low tide on the floating dock; like paddling a kayak for the first time on an ecology tour of the marine estuary; like finding the north star by using the Big Dipper.

But one of the highlights was going to the Marineland Dolphin Adventure aquarium to swim with the dolphins.  As long as you had a fish or squid in one hand, the dolphins happily followed your hand signals to dance around & splash the swimmers.  (I know the dolphins were happy, ‘cause they smiled all the time!)  Because Madeleine was just 8 years old, Sue went into the water with her & also got to shake hands (or flippers) with a dolphin.  An added benefit was Madeleine holding an easel board while a dolphin held a tube of acrylic paint to create a masterpiece of dolphin art.

And then we headed to the Orlando area to spend 2 days at LegoLand Florida.  Madeleine has been hooked (by her dad) on anything Star Wars, especially Lego, so she was in heaven for the entire time.  Between the amusement park, where she was fearless on all roller coasters, and the water park, where she tried to become a dolphin in the water, she decided to live there from now on.

There were numerous creatures around the park, all
constructed with Legos.  It took Lego artists many months
and several million Legos to construct all the creatures/structures.

Coming off one of the roller coasters, Madeleine fared
much better than her "Opa" did!

For those of you old enough to remember,
the new LegoLand took over the property where
the old Cypress Gardens ski & water show used
to be.  Lego still offers a ski show for entertainment.
This Southern Belle in a big hoop skirt, like we
saw in the old Cypress Gardens, is now
made entirely of Legos!

Yes, we enjoyed entertaining her for a week.  It was probably the highlight of our summer, too.  So now we’re in Chattanooga caring for Sue’s mother, who has her 94^th birthday tomorrow.  Sue is going to mess up all the diabetic residents in the nursing home by bringing in a birthday cake for all to share.

After that, we’ll head back to the boat to prepare for our travels.  We’ll have 2-3 weeks to get to the St Pete/Tampa area before we need to put the boat up for a week while we attend a wedding in Ohio, with a detour afterwards to visit our friendly attorney concerning the estate of Sue’s uncle.  Looking to close our cruising season a month early this year, around Oct 1.