Go...No Go....Try to Go

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     Those of you who are living your life vicariously through this blog, I know have been waiting for this post.   Did they go across the gulf to Clearwater or did they stay safe in the intracoastal?  If you remember the last post, we had a weather window predicting  1 foot seas starting on Tuesday and lasting until Wednesday night, before the seas would start to get in the 2 to 3 foot range and keep on increasing to 5 to 6 foot by Saturday.   We had met a Captain at Santa Rosa Yacht Club who suggested just going across from Panama City to Clearwater.  I should have suspected something was awry when his partner looked askance at him, saying did you suggest that and than said most people usually leave from Carrabelle. Tom and I were salivating looking at the weather window which we could take advantage of and make the crossing.  Beth was much more cautious saying "Ralph, there's a reason most people don't do that!"  So I came up with a plan.  (I can hear y'all starting to chuckle and say in your heads, oh! oh! Ralphie.)

                                                            Air Naval Flights                  

     Options! Ya! Options!   We would head out of Panama city and if it got rough  we would turn in to St. Josephs Bay, if tolerable we would continue on past the San Blas Shoals direct to Clearwater. (The Captain had warned us that it might get a little bumpy until we got past the shoals, stay in 50 feet of water.)  Bumpy! Maybe a captain would call it bumpy but us pleasure boaters found it toooo rough. What started out as 1 to 2 foot seas kept progressing to 4 to 5 foot seas  with the boat bouncing and banging to the point where this Captain got....well....should I say .....a little green around the gills!

                                                       Good Bye Panama City           

     Tom, who is a former navy man smiled as he took the helm and I went to the recently purchased lazy-boy chair and assumed the recumbent position.   As I lay back I looked over at Beth sitting on the couch......glaring at me....hmmmm....no sympathy in those eyes! ....."This could be a long trip, " I thought as I closed my eyes to fight back the dizziness and early waves of nausea.  We were only 2 hours out (you can see our course if you click on spot and go back to Tuesday)  but it would be 2 hours back in to the protected waters of St. Josephs Bay and my hopes were dashed for a relatively quick crossing to the west coast of Florida.  In fact, this meant leaving the boat in Carabelle for several weeks since the weather was going to get nasty.
     Once in calmer waters my "mal de mer" quickly passed, so I took over the helm  along the cut from the bay back in to the intracoastal.   Within 2 miles I found out that the piece of "duck weed" in the centre of the water was not...it was a log..that was the first thing I hit since putting on the reworked props...oh well,  no vibration but this was turning out to be a bad day and it was about to get worse.
     Because we left at noon to make the night crossing and because we spent 4 hours out in the Gulf we were going to have to travel the ICW in the dark to make it to Apalachicola tonight.  No problem, I thought.  There is very little barge traffic, unlike the area around Beaumont and Port Arthur. 
     No moon.  Ya, no moon, therefore no light, therefore couldn't see shit!  But, I had my map plotter and radar and a huge 2,000 watt beam flashlight to pick out the markers.   Still nerve wracking, especially when I came around a bend and saw red lights all across the river and what looked like two boats in the middle of the river.  WTF was going on?   The map plotter indicated the red lights were a swing bridge and the other lights weren't boats.  They weren't even on the water...They were lights from houses on the shore!  Do I need to tell you that things look different at night! 
    I inched toward the red lights to see if the swing bridge was open with Tom and Mildred on the bow waving me  forward... but I was already on top of the damn thing....Not!  I was at least a quarter mile away.  (Did I already say things look different in the dark!)   We slowly passed through the open bridge and I decided to abandon the plan to head directly out through Apalachicola toward Tarpon Springs.  All of us were tired and stressed out.  We would stay at the free municipal wharf in Appalachicola for the night.