Captain's Choice blog: The Amazing Race

The marina in Panama City is located a few blocks from downtown. There are shops and restaurants but only a couple of restaurants were open Sunday night. We enjoyed a nice dinner with Steve and Teresa from Sanctuary. This little downtown sleeps on Sunday but really came to life Monday. There is a trolley that will take you just about anywhere in Panama City so Mark and I went to re-provision. The stores are about 3-4 miles away but first you have to board a bus for the University of Florida at Panama City so that we could transfer to the bus that takes you to Publix and Wal-Mart (approx. 50 minute ride). It really makes you appreciate all of the marinas that offer courtesy cars (no matter what condition they are in). We won't be complaining about courtesy cars with cracked windshields, fuel gauges that don't work, low tire pressure lights, check engine lights, change oil soon lights...I think you get the picture. It was also a great way to see Panama City!

We are off to Apalachicola on Tuesday to stage for the Gulf crossing Wednesday to Thursday. We will also be going back to the Eastern time zone (I hope that helps me sleep in). We did get a few hours to explore Apalachicola, cute town with many shops and restaurants. We heard the ice cream shop has an old fashioned soda fountain, so we stopped in but we hadn't eaten dinner yet (since when has that stopped us?) so we just looked around...cute! They have the Oyster City brewery, where we tried a couple of the local brews, which were very good. Then on to dinner...now Apalach is known to be the place to get fresh oysters (like from the boat that morning fresh), so we went to Boss's for dinner. Mark had the oysters, which he said were fantastic and I had the shrimp (also delicious). We watched the shrimp boats come and go, so nice to get fresh not frozen seafood.

Wednesday morning we were treated to the pelicans looking for breakfast when we left Apalachicola. If you've never watched the pelicans these birds are not graceful when they land, it's a big splash like a cannonball, chow down and on to the next one. Very comical!

I have decided to dub the Gulf crossing "The Amazing Race for loopers". The reality TV show, The Amazing Race, has teams of two people that race around the world in competition with each other. They have road blocks, tasks and clues to get to the next country. That's a little like looping...and the Gulf crossing is one of the "countries" so to speak. First you have to have a good weather window! This can be a roadblock as we met people that had to wait weeks to make the crossing. You check Eddy's Weather Wag, Marv's data and any other weather information that helps you feel comfortable (aka tasks). Next you find a buddy boat (always better to travel with someone) and meet with your buddy boat(s) and talk about speed, time to depart, route (aka tasks/strategy). On the day of departure (Wednesday for us) we were to meet Miss Liberty out at Dog Island and anchor until our departure time of 4:30 p.m.(task). What a glorious departure, the winds were "from the calm" as they were suppose to be most of the night, the sun was warm and we had taken a nap so we were all set for our 17 hour tour (cue up Gilligan's Island theme song). The sunset was magnificent, the stars came out and they were bright in the sky but it was dark on the water, couldn't see a thing (obstacle), then the moon rose and it was a sight to behold (just 2 days earlier it was the super moon) and lit our way on the water. About 4-5 hours into the trip the winds came up from the east (not expected, obstacle) and we did rock and roll with some 3 foot rollers on the beam (side of the boat). Not too bad considering we are from Lake Erie and 3 footers can come up quick. The only problem is we had planned on taking turns sleeping on the bridge and that was a futile effort with the rocking and rolling (another obstacle because we each ended up with about 45 minutes sleep all night). Around 4 a.m. the winds seemed to subside. We had a beautiful sunrise and were heading east 138 degrees, so we were looking right into the sun. The only problem with that and the reason they tell you not to be too close to shore until after 10 a.m. is the crab pots (obstacle). We started seeing them around 28 statute miles off marker R4 and they were around us until we got to our anchorage at Anclote Key. The reason we had to anchor (detour) is because we needed to wait for the tide to start to rise to safely take the boat to the marina.
So all told, we left Dog Island around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and were tied to the dock by 1 p.m. Thursday. Even though I am dubbing this the amazing race, it really isn't a race or competition between boats. It really is a competition/challenge to yourself and your team. It's trying something new, its depending on each other (with no sleep) to get through the journey, it's working with others for a safe voyage for all. It was our version of the amazing race and we did good!
Now that we were at Turtle Cove Marina we thought about a nap, decided sleep was overrated and washed the salt off the boat. We ate an early delicious dinner and called it "boater's midnight at 7 p.m..

Friday we both felt great after a good night's sleep and ventured over to the sponge docks and shops in town. Tarpon Springs became known as the sponge capital of the world by 1900. The sponge beds were discovered accidentally in 1873 by Key West turtle fisherman off the mouth of the Anclote River. Greek immigrants expanded and refined sponging in Tarpon Springs and Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek heritage in the US. Herb, the harbor host joined Chas and Barb from Miss Liberty and us for dinner at Costas, one of the many Greek restaurants in town.

Tomorrow we will head out for Dunedin and Marker One Marina.