After a very "lumpy" night at anchor, we headed up a protected canal to join the Intracoastal Waterway for a few hours to move over to Apalachicola. Going east in small increments!
A few odd sights on the canal - this appeared to be a sort of "junkyard"....
Neat little "oxbows" off the main channel. Lots of floating debris so we had to be careful.
Occasionally we saw little floating houses tucked back off the main waterway. Never saw anyone - I assume they're for fishing??
Cool railroad bridge - it was open so we just passed thru.
Anchored just off the little town of Apalachicola near a marshy area.
Went to the Owl Cafe for "happy hour". I had a great local beer - Oyster City First Light of the Day - sortof like Blue Moon. Very good. I had to try the "Duck Fries" - they were absolutely divine but definitely a diet-buster. Basically fries with white gravy, cheese and slivers of duck. Oh, plus a dozen raw oysters. Yeah, I don't need to eat for a month now.....back to the boat via dinghy for a very calm night.
We went straight to the Port St. Joe marina to top off our water and fuel tanks. Only used 14 gallons of fuel the whole week! Very nice protected marina.
Helpful and friendly dockhands.
We took our handy little fold-up cart and walked about 1/2 mile to the Piggly Wiggly to get some fresh produce and a few other items.
A "brief" of pelicans on the breakwater. (I looked up the name for a group of pelicans!)
Sojourn anchored in the bay near the marina.....we're not paying dock fees when we can avoid it.
Our view at sunset looking back towards the marina.
Most of you know that we quit drinking all sodas (except seltzer water) several years ago. At home, we keep 12 packs of seltzer water on hand and drink it frequently.
On the boat, keeping stores of cans of water is just not feasible. The alternative is to make our own fizzy water!
You may have seen commercials for the "Soda Stream"....the problem with it is that you have to use their very expensive special CO2 cartridges. An alternative is something called a Fizz Giz. It's sold by a guy in Greensboro on Amazon. We got one and it is a bit of a bother to get it set up...but once you've got it set up, the CO2 only costs $4 to fill the large bottle at the sporting goods store. It's about twice as big as the custom Soda Stream bottle.
Fizzy water for a few pennies a bottle.
The seller offered to send some free extra caps to anyone who would post a Youtube video about his product.
You all also probably know that I thought his offer was a good deal.....so here's my silly video!
We woke to beautiful blue skies and 33 degrees.....brrrrr.
Overnite, another boat had joined us in our snug little anchorage.
The weather has finally given us a little "window" to head out in pretty benign conditions. Plans are for us to lift anchor before noon today and head offshore to Port St. Joe. It will be an overnite sail and we don't want to get there after dark if we can avoid it. See ya later!
We've been at anchor for 6 days now and have used 75 of our 100 gallons of water. That's 12.5 gallons per day - and includes flushing toilets, cooking, washing dishes and 2 showers each so far. Pretty good conservation, I think! Wonder how much each of us uses on land per day?
So, we cranked up the reverse osmosis watermaker for the first time. We were afraid that the previous owner hadn't set it up for storage properly. The equipment must be flushed and treated if it's not going to be used for a long period of time.
But it worked perfectly! Duane tested the output water for salinity - and it was pure. I took the first taste....it tasted like....nothing. So, he turned a valve and started sending the pure water into the storage tank.
We made about 20 gallons of water - took about 1 hour running the generator. It requires a lot of 110v power so can't be run off the solar panels/battery.
Now that we know it works, we can run it any time we're low on water. We are really off-the-grid self-sufficient with this boat!
We're just relaxing at anchor in Pensacola waiting on this crazy cold/rainy weather to pass.
The winds have been pretty high! We saw over 35 knots....but the anchor is really "stuck" and has been holding us in place for days now.
Doing lots of reading all bundled up. We run the generator every few hours to warm things up and get rid of some of the condensation. So, we're fairly comfy.
View this morning from the back of the boat....the "warm" water is steaming in the 39 degree air temp!
We decided to leave our little bayou and get a few hours closer to our "shove off" point. So, we motored about 10 miles down the Intracoastal Waterway - met a couple of big barges on the way.
Shortly after we left the Alabama bayou area, the waterway started to look a little more "populated".
And we officially made it to Florida!!
Our anchorage for the next several day will be near Ft. McCree. It's just a little cut that is made between the barrier island (Perdido Key) and a man-made "spoils" area that is essentially a huge pile of sand the Army Corps of Engineers placed there to get rid of the sand from dredging. Perfect little cove though!
Dropped the anchor and took advantage of the still-75 degree weather to tour the remains of Fort McCree.
Beached the dinghy.
Wandered around the little island...sort of pitiful for a National Park Service area - completely overgrown and left to the elements. The fort was used during the civil war and then occasionally thru the years up to the late 1940's.
I believe these probably were gun turrets, but no markings to tell me.
Remains of some buildings.
Lovely views though!
We wandered around on the dunes - this is apparently a popular weekend spot and there appear to be no restrictions about wandering around like you see at the NC beaches. (Sojourn is in the middle of the anchorage in this photo)
Walked all the way over to the actual Gulf beach - not a lot of shells, but found several little sand-dollars!
The mainsail halyard (the line that raises the sail to the top of the mast) had chafed badly on something at the top of the mast during the offshore sail.
This is the piece of line we ended up cutting off. It would have completely broken soon and the main sail would have dropped if we had used it again.
In order to investigate what is causing the problem and correct it, Duane had to go up the mast again. All the way to the top this time - 60'!
He filed some areas that he said looked sharp, but no "smoking gun" as to a cause.
He made a couple of adjustments where the sail connects to the mast
track, so hopefully he's solved the problem. If it chafes again, it
will be a very expensive line to buy! (Wish we'd thought to buy one
when West Marine had all their line 50% off on "Black Friday"!!!)
Here is his view from the top - I'm sitting in the bow chair at the red arrow!
His view looking back towards Gulf shores.
Nothing else much happening - still waiting on the nasty weather to approach and pass.
Looks like we'll hunker down here near Pensacola for several days waiting out a cold front that is due this evening. As a result of the cold front, the weather offshore will be nasty all the way thru the weekend! So we're going to stay put until it's pleasant! No need to bash ourselves in 8 foot seas when we don't have to!
Went for a fun dinghy ride up the little bayou. Temperature is still very pleasant 70's here. That will change tomorrow to the 50's. Not looking forward to that!!
This is the first real excursion we've taken on the dinghy - 30 HP on a 11' inflatable is a bit overkill!!
But really fun and fast!!
Up the bayou there was a sad little derelict sailboat. Always wonder what the story is behind things like this. It doesn't look terrible - someone could probably salvage it.
Back to the boat - we're still the only one anchored here.
Being fairly stationary, I've taken the opportunity to do just a little cooking with my limited resources. I wanted a hearty soup.
Pulled out the pressure cooker - lentils, rice, onion, carrot and a bunch of spices.
After it heated up and was under pressure, only 3 minutes! Turned the gas off and let it release pressure naturally. All done!
Dinner for two with leftovers. I figure it cost about a dollar + cost of the propane. We won't go hungry!
We woke to a pretty sunrise anchored in the southern edge of Mobile Bay.
We're in no rush - there is weather coming offshore that will keep us near Pensacola until the weekend. Ate a leisurely breakfast.
We had been monitoring our fuel during the 4 days off shore. We only
have 100 gallons of fuel...remember this is a brand new tank that got
installed during the long wait to buy the boat, a little different than
the original tank.
We knew we were running low on fuel, but the gauge read 1/8 of a tank.
Duane opened the tank and got a "stick" reading (which means
he stuck a wooden dowel in the tank and pulled it up to see where the
wetness stopped). This measurement said there was about 4" of fuel left
in the tank. This means there was still ALOT of fuel left even though
the gauge read 1/8 full. (Our airplane experiences have taught us NEVER to believe fuel gauges).
Satisfied that we had plenty of fuel for the 4 hour motor to our chosen fuel stop, we cranked up both engines to pull the anchor. (And remember, we have those 2 - 5 gallon jugs spare on the deck).
The starboard engine quit! We quickly shut down the port engine to investigate. Looks like the fuel pickup tubes are set really high, probably to prevent intake of water at the bottom of the tank or maybe just in a different position than they were originally. But this is unacceptably high and will have to be changed eventually.
So, Duane used one of the 5 gallon jugs to replenish the fuel. This will be plenty 4 hour run on one engine (they use about .7 gallons per hour at a fairly low cruise RPM). Very efficient!
Duane did have to bleed the air out of the lines, but both engines cranked up and ran fine. Crisis averted, we headed down the Gulf Coast Intracoastal Waterway.
Past some developed areas and lots of wide open spaces. Very similar to the east coast Intracoastal near Oriental.
Stopped at Barber's Marina for our first diesel fillup. Very nice marina.
The fillup was only 65 gallons in the 100 gallon tank. This means that close to 35 gallons in the tank are unusable! We'll order longer pickup tubes and that issue will be an easy fix. I'm just glad we didn't run out of fuel 20 minutes earlier last night while we were coming into the Mobile shipping channel in total darkness!
Just a mile further on the waterway is beautiful Ingram's Bayou anchorage. We were the only ones there.
Well, except for a dozen or so dolphin! Fascinating to sit and watch for them to surface over and over.
Let's see - I'm supposed to describe myself....married for WOW 43 years!, mom of two boys (now men), pilot, sailor (in training), happy (most of the time), traveler (when I can!), always have a book (or Kindle!) on the nitestand, always planning the next adventure (big and small!)
