Tuesday, October 11, 2011 – Allanton East Bay of St. Andrews Bay, mile 306.5

We were up before sunrise and away from the dock at 6:30 am. The sky was cloudy, temperature was 70 degrees and the wind was blowing from the NNE at 8 to 18 knots. Dual Dreams pulled out of the anchorage moments before us and we followed them into Choctawhatchee Bay. With the wind, we were able to travel at 7.5 knots and had a great 20-mile sail across the bay. When we entered the canal that connects Choctawhatchee Bay and St. Andrews Bay, we lost our wind and slowed to about 5.5 knots.

By mid afternoon, we exited the canal into St. Andrews Bay and picked up a light westerly breeze. It wasn’t much, but we kept the mainsail up and used whatever wind we could catch. The original plan was to anchor in Smack Bayou near Panama City but since it was only 3:30 pm, we decided to go another five miles to Pearl Bayou where Dual Dreams had said they would likely anchor for the night.

As we neared the entrance to Pearl Bayou, we found the smell from the paper mill to be overwhelming. When we anchored in Smack Bayou two years ago, the wind had been out of the east and drove the smell right into our boat. It was physically sickening to both of us. With a west wind blowing, we would have been fine in Smack Bayou on this occasion but we did not want to backtrack. We kept on going past Pearl Bayou to get some distance from the mill and the smell.

Ten miles and two hours later, we found a nice little anchorage in the East Bay at Allanton. It was not noted as an anchorage in any of our guides, but in fair weather, it turned out to be very peaceful and safe. Even though we had traveled from sunrise to sunset, we had enjoyed the day and were excited for tomorrow when we would cover the last few miles to Port St. Joe.