Moving Down the Panhandle

Saturday, November 28 - We woke up to a beautiful day at the Harborwalk in Destin, Florida!  The wind and waves settled down enough for us to leave.  Our destination was Panama City where we would meet up with the other Loopers we traveling with.

                                                  View from Harborwalk.

Our cruise to Panama City was dramatically different than when we were last on the water.  We no longer pounded into the waves as we headed eatst.  The water was nice and calm. We traveled through Chotawhatchee Bay into West Bay.  To  our delight, we started seeing dolphins!  Carey saw the first dolphin and told Nancy.  Nancy looked out the port (left) side door and screamed!  A dolphin had just jumped out of the water just as she looked outside and it scared her half to death!  He was big!  Once things calmed down, we enjoyed watching the dolphins as they swam beside our boat.  They get very close to the boat as we cruise - probably as close as 5 feet away. Sometimes they came in pairs, sometimes alone.   They kept up their speed to match the speed we were traveling.

Flipper entertaining us!  Notice the deep blue water!  No more muddy river water.

We went from West Bay into a canal section which was uneventful, but beautiful with white sandy dunes along the side.


We finally pulled into Panama City Marina around 2:30 p.m. after a good cruising day!  Once we got there, we met up with Mazel Tug and found out that they (along with several) were getting ready to leave on the Gulf crossing.  The window of opportunity was to arrive on Monday with the weather window closing on Wednesday.  Our plan was to slowly make our way to Carabelle and then make the Gulf crossing.  There were several harbor towns we wanted to visit along the way before getting to Carabelle, so we decided to stick to our original plan and not rush.  There will be another weather window to cross the Gulf of Mexico.

Since we decided to slow down and not rush, we spent a second night in Panama City.  Sunday night we got together for docktails at St. Andrew's Marina, another Panama City marina.  Ralph and Linda from Mazel Tug had rented a car and graciously drove us to join in the fun.  The talk at docktails was of the crossing!  There were at least 4 boats planning on leaving directly from Panama City to do the crossing.  Fortunately, we met several new Loopers who were taking their time and planning to do a later crossing.  We will stay in touch with them as we get closer to Caribelle and start to plan our crossing.  Carey is excited about crossing overnight, Nancy not so much!

                                               Panama City Marina.

Monday, November 30 - After spending 2 days in Panama City, we left and cruised to Port St. Joe City Marina.  This marina is small, but there's a restaurant on site, it has nice bathrooms, clean docks, and is walkable to a grocery store and a CVS Pharmacy!  Very nice. Tomorrow we plan to move on to Apalachicola for 2 nights.  Hope we see more dolphins tomorrow!

                                           LeeLoo at Port St. Joe City Marina