We spent the last 3 days traveling in order to reach our destination for the next month, Port St. Joe, FL. We have heard that it is a sleepy little piece of “old Florida” and are excited to explore and play here for a while. Luckily we managed to get into port and secured a few hours before the rain arrived yesterday evening. Today it is windy and rainy and we are doing little exploring at all, instead we are catching up with e-mails, re-setting our clocks to Eastern Time and being lazy.
I understand there is a lot of history here, including the fact that the Florida Constitution was signed here in 1838. Count on more historical tidbits as I learn them.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
On the Water Again
Miss Lauren Grace and her crew started the new sailing year off right with a delightful crossing of Choctawhatchee Bay (between Ft. Walton and Panama City) in flat calm conditions! Considering we have certainly navigated much larger bodies of water you may be wondering why this is noteworthy; the short answer is that we took the worst spanking of our boating experience on Choctawhatchee and we will never forget it.
Four years ago when we bought the Lauren Grace in Florida we brought her North to Kentucky Lake in order to facilitate moving aboard. We left Panama City on a bright sunny morning about 11:00 a.m. heading west; did I mention that we were somewhat inexperienced. The weather was beautiful, from a landlubber’s point of view, and we blissfully enjoyed a short passage through a land cut between Panama City and Choctawhatchee. When we came out into the bay it was WINDY, probably about 20 mph and right out of the West. This meant, for you non-boaters reading this, the waves were right on our bow; and they were BIG waves. Choctawhatchee Bay is 30 miles long, oriented East-West and fairly shallow. It was also noon or later when we arrived so there had been time to work up quite a good fetch over that 30 miles and the waves were probably about 3-4 ft and very close together. At the time I was certain they were at least 10 ft! Spray from our bow hitting the waves was going over the top of the flying bridge as the bow slammed into the trough before burying in the cresting wave. In addition the navigation marks were few and far between and it was difficult to focus the binoculars in order to find them (we didn’t have a chart plotter yet and we were too inexperienced to think to turn on the radar on a clear sunny day). We used our sailing skills and tried to minimize the pounding by “tacking” across the waves and then “tacking” back, this provided only a small improvement in the ride but it did manage to significantly lengthen our trip across, thus prolonging the misery.
We have since had quite enjoyable rides across C Bay but we always treat it with a great deal of respect and always try to have anything that can move lashed down as we approach it, just in case. This time we knew it would be a good day when the porpoises starting playing around us nearly as soon as we got underway.
As we arrived in Panama City friends we cruised with up on the Tennessee this past summer were standing by to catch our lines. It has been a good day.
We have enjoyed being on the move again. When we returned from Boise in early January it was freezing in the Western Panhandle, as it was in most of the country. Too cold to enjoy traveling so we remained in our marina on Perdido Key, Fl (just East of Orange Beach, AL) with the heaters running on high.
Four years ago when we bought the Lauren Grace in Florida we brought her North to Kentucky Lake in order to facilitate moving aboard. We left Panama City on a bright sunny morning about 11:00 a.m. heading west; did I mention that we were somewhat inexperienced. The weather was beautiful, from a landlubber’s point of view, and we blissfully enjoyed a short passage through a land cut between Panama City and Choctawhatchee. When we came out into the bay it was WINDY, probably about 20 mph and right out of the West. This meant, for you non-boaters reading this, the waves were right on our bow; and they were BIG waves. Choctawhatchee Bay is 30 miles long, oriented East-West and fairly shallow. It was also noon or later when we arrived so there had been time to work up quite a good fetch over that 30 miles and the waves were probably about 3-4 ft and very close together. At the time I was certain they were at least 10 ft! Spray from our bow hitting the waves was going over the top of the flying bridge as the bow slammed into the trough before burying in the cresting wave. In addition the navigation marks were few and far between and it was difficult to focus the binoculars in order to find them (we didn’t have a chart plotter yet and we were too inexperienced to think to turn on the radar on a clear sunny day). We used our sailing skills and tried to minimize the pounding by “tacking” across the waves and then “tacking” back, this provided only a small improvement in the ride but it did manage to significantly lengthen our trip across, thus prolonging the misery.
We have since had quite enjoyable rides across C Bay but we always treat it with a great deal of respect and always try to have anything that can move lashed down as we approach it, just in case. This time we knew it would be a good day when the porpoises starting playing around us nearly as soon as we got underway.
As we arrived in Panama City friends we cruised with up on the Tennessee this past summer were standing by to catch our lines. It has been a good day.
We have enjoyed being on the move again. When we returned from Boise in early January it was freezing in the Western Panhandle, as it was in most of the country. Too cold to enjoy traveling so we remained in our marina on Perdido Key, Fl (just East of Orange Beach, AL) with the heaters running on high.
I have made one New Year's ressolution and that is to better learn how to manage pictures in Blogger; if any of you reading this can provide advice to help speed the learning curve of a Tech challenged grandma pleas e-mail me, as you can see below I need help.
Christmas break was perfect as we enjoyed the time we spent in the best gig of our lives, being Grammy & Grandpa, which Lauren is increasingly shortening to Grampy. You can tell that we are absolute fools where they are concerned.
Lauren is 5 already and quite grown up. She is phoning us on her own now and bossing us long di
stance.
Anna, our little sunshine, is just 1 and full of the dickens.
stance.
Anna, our little sunshine, is just 1 and full of the dickens.She is already saying a few words so I expect she will follow her sister's lead and be talking non-stop soon.
I thought nothing was finer than a brown-eyed girl…until little Miss blue eyes arrived!
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