Sat, Oct 8 to Sun, Oct 9, 2011 – Ft McRae, mile 178.4, near Pensacola

Captain Gale's Quote for the Day:

Bein’ on the hook when the weather’s good, you can’t beat. Bein’ on the hook when the weather’s not, you can’t sleep.

Words spoken after a wild night at anchor. Around 1 am, the wind came up and started blowing us around pretty good. It wasn’t nearly as bad for us, though, as it was for the folks camped out on the beach. At 3 am, we could no longer see the three tents that had been set up near the water’s edge. We weren’t sure if the people were trying to sleep on their boats or if they were just up walking around. There was a lot of unsettledness around the campsite and it had to be pretty chilly for them.

The sunrise revealed the tents had been torn down and reset up in the sand dunes. Hopefully, the campers had been able to get a little bit of sleep.

The wind continued to blow all morning and by 11 am, they had packed up their little runabouts and taken off. We soon had the anchor up and motored one mile over to the Ft McRae anchorage for a little more protection. Not to mention the fact that Gale would be closer to his fishing hole.

 

Towards the middle of the afternoon, the wind began to die down just as it had the last couple of days and Gale took the dinghy out to catch more redfish. And catch he did – another four redfish and a nice flounder in about an hour’s time. He released all but the flounder since we had no room in the freezer for more big fish.

 

 




On Saturday and Sunday we shared the anchorage with a few local boaters – especially during the daylight hours.



Gale took some time on Sunday afternoon to make some new lines. We especially needed to replace the line that broke on the fortress anchor when we were at Sumter Recreation Area back on the river in Alabama. He also made a new snub line that we use to take some of the weight off the anchor chain when it is in use or to secure the anchor when it’s up on deck in the windlass.

 

The wind calmed for a short time on Sunday afternoon and we used that time to set a second anchor. We knew we would both sleep better with two anchors. It wasn’t long before the wind kicked up again but since it was early, we hoped that maybe it wouldn’t blow all night long.