Mobile to Fort Myers

The day after Thanksgiving the winds kicked up, so we stayed put in Mobile to spend more time with our new looper friends. For lunch we all went to a popular local diner, The Dew Drop Inn, to experience its great greasy food. One national food critic named it one of the four best spots in the U.S. for onion rings. The rings were good, indeed! The following day we left with Janice and Eddie across Mobile Bay.














Passing the historic Middle Channel Light, we headed across the big water bay to Pensacola on the eastern part of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway (GIWW). We traveled three days with our friends, the first two nights rafting our boats together on the hook. One night we experienced a gorgeous sunset, and the next night we enjoyed the lights of the nearby Choctawhatchee Bridge.

In this part of Florida, the GIWW has lots of different looks, as you cruise sometimes by the dunes of barrier islands, sometimes down man made canals, and sometimes through impenetrable swamps.

 

When we arrived in Panama City, Perfect Timing was on its own. We reprovisioned there and prepared our boat for an approaching storm which hit the next day with winds as high as 60 miles per hour. After four days at the city marina, we left for Apalachicola with its working shrimp and oysterboat fleet.

For two days we ate ourselves silly with fresh oysters, shrimp, and scallops. We seriously studied weather forecasts while there, knowing we next had to cross a 180 mile expanse of open Gulf.

We left with another boat for Dog Island, a small island nine miles off Carabelle, Florida. We anchored there to get a quick start at first light. Though we and our buddy boat friends, Jeff and Lynda, were apprehensive about the crossing, we picked our window well. We saw 2-4 footers on the beam for the first five hours--enough to get our cat, Schatze, sick--before the seas calmed down to 1-3's for the remaining 3 1/2 hours to Clearwater.

 Though tired from the crossing, we left the next morning for Venice which had an easy entrance to a marina with great views of the channel as well as of the beautiful homes downriver. We left at 10:00 AM in heavy fog for a slow cruise toward Ft. Myers. When the fog lifted at noon, we picked up our pace and arrived, exhausted, at Salty Sam's marina, where the boat will remain for five weeks. In a few days we will leave for a two week respite at home over Christmas.