Friday, November 6, 2009

We were up shortly after 5 am to prepare for a long day on the water. The skies were clear, the temperature was a cool 55 degrees and there was a 5 mph east wind. After listening to the forecast last night, we knew we would be heading almost directly into an east wind all day and wanted to cover 60 miles before sunset. At 6:45 am, we pulled anchor, said “Goodbye” to Ally’s Cat and headed out into Choctawhatchee Bay. The first 25 miles of our trip was in the open water of the bay. The water was not as rough and choppy as yesterday – which both Lucy and Maureen were very happy about – so we made this passage in about 4 hours without any difficulty. Since we were going straight into the wind, we didn’t feel the “chop” quite as much as we might have if we were taking the waves at an angle.




The next 16 miles took us through the “Grand Canyon,” a land cut connecting West Bay at the west side of Panama City to Choctawhatchee Bay. There is no good place to stop along this section, but the scenery was interesting and the waters calm. There were dolphins playing in front of and beside the boat – putting Lucy on guard. Even though Lucy has traveled with us aboard Blue Heron for six months and 3,800 miles without jumping or falling off the boat, we predict that she may lose her head and/or her footing and find herself unexpectedly in the water while we are in Florida and it will involve either a dolphin or an alligator. We’re hoping it’s not an alligator!



The final 20-mile leg through Choctawhatchee Bay brought us to Panama City and Grand Lagoon. It was getting late in the day and we were hoping to be able to anchor just off the channel of the inlet into Grand Lagoon and Bay Point Marina. We were planning to stop at Bay Point Marina tomorrow anyway where we would fuel up, pick up the packages we had mailed there and even stay the night. We found the anchorage mentioned in our guidebook on the south shore just off Andrews State Park; however, there was a large active dredging operation going on and it didn’t look like a very restful spot. We decided to head to Smack Bayou, another five miles down the way, described in our materials as a very well protected hurricane hole.

Smack Bayou was certainly well protected and a little tricky to get into. We anchored near an old guy in a de-masted sailboat who told us to be sure to watch the dolphins because they might dance on their tails for us! We didn’t see any dancing dolphins but there were a couple of curious ones who checked out the boat and excited Lucy. Gale threw in a line using squid for bait and caught a catfish immediately! He said he didn’t feel like cleaning catfish so he cut that one loose and caught another one (the same one?) right away. After a long day of cruising he decided to cut that one loose, too, and try his luck another night.

We were comfortable on our boat and sleeping quite nicely until a very pungent industrial smell woke us up and made it difficult to go back to sleep. Gale began to feel a bit nauseated; Maureen tried covering her head and filtering out the odor; Lucy didn’t seem to be bothered at all. It turned out to be coming from a paper plant to the east of us. Right then we decided we probably wouldn’t be staying in Panama City another night!

During the night, Maureen got up to use the head and as she was flushing, she noticed sparkling lights in the water! It was almost like a TV commercial where they try to show sparkles after something has been cleaned. Evidently, there was some sort of bioluminescent plankton in the water and when it was churned up, it flashed. For anyone unfamiliar with a marine head, the source of water for the holding tank comes from the outside freshwater or seawater your boat is currently sitting in. We wondered how long we would enjoy this phenomenon.