Panhandlin’

• Dog River, Mobile Bay to Apalachicola, Florida

Grand Mariner Marina, we just cannot say enough good things about our visit. Tasha reached out to them four days before our arrival, and they were so responsive and welcoming. We arrived after a wild ride across the bay and four guys were on the dock to help us in.

With new owners in the last 7 months, they have put their blood, sweat, and tears into rehabbing this marina. It may have lacked modern, fancy amenities, it may have been a little vintage and in need of some curb appeal, but their customer service was second to none. It reminded us of the quaint marinas in Canada. They dropped by the boat no less than a half dozen times a day to check on us, make sure we had everything we needed, and to offer to assist in any way. This just doesn’t happen other places. We stayed three nights and wished we would have planned to stay more! There was a great little restaurant on site and the service there was incredible.

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We had only one debacle during this visit and the owner came to the rescue. Remy still likes to take long walks each day and Tasha was wanting to stretch her legs too. After being on the river anchored a couple of nights, it was time these two took off for a hike through our new surroundings. We had walked by a junkyard on our walk. On the return walk (only one way in and out), about 30 yards from the junk yard, three loud, barking dogs came charging. Tasha knew there was no way they should try to continue and called David letting him know they were trapped, and she needed help. David was talking to one of the owners at the time and he started running and told David to come along. They jumped in a golf cart and came barreling down the road. The dogs had calmed by then but were still on watch and occupying the middle of the road. David came down to where Tasha and Remy were, and the marina owner tried to no avail to contact the junk yard people to get their dogs. He then left to go get his truck, telling David, he was fearful they would jump in the golf cart to get to Remy.

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In the meantime, Phil, the canvas maker Tasha and Remy had talked to in the marina parking lot came driving down the road. He stopped and indicated I should have told you not to come down here with Remy. He insisted we all pile in his truck for him to take us back. In the meantime, Bill the marina owner came back with his truck and was laying on the horn outside the junk yard house. He was completely agitated and was totally defending our girl. What we learned later was that these dogs were a regular nuisance and had even cornered him one time. He had no time for them. He assured us he was going to have this taken care of soon. Tasha didn’t want to know anymore but we were certainly thankful that Bill and Phil saved us!

We loved this place and hope to make it back to see all the improvements they have planned. And any place that writes on facebook, “we all love sweet Remy” is our kind of favorite any day! As much as we enjoyed our stay, it was time to move on.

We planned our crossing of Mobile Bay. It is a large body of water and very shallow in spots, so winds play a huge part in crossing. We departed around 8:30 am with two boats. Now or Never took the lead, watching all the navigational beacons and following the channels, with barge and coast guard traffic, wind pushing us out of the channel, and sport fish boats waking the *&^% out of us. We made it across with no issues and within about 4.5 hours we were in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). It is hard to believe this narrow, protected, passageway will take us most of the way around the coast on our journey. The first marina we came to and many loopers stopped at was Homeport, home to the famous LuLu’s Restaurant. Lulu’s is owned by Lucy Buffet, Jimmy’s sister, and has the flare and character of Margaritaville. We had visited a couple of years ago by car, and while it’s a fun restaurant there isn’t much else around the marina. We continued just a couple of miles more to The Wharf in Orange Beach.

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This marina is large and filled with LARGE boats. Now or Never looked very small here. We entered the outer docks and there were two platinum loopers sitting in chairs, cheering on those coming in, ringing a cowbell, and yelling “Yay! Loopers!” Quite nice to have a cheering section welcoming you. They organized a get together at the local restaurant and over 20 loopers attended.

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Now or Never certainly didn’t seem small enough when we were led down a tiny fairway and the captain had to dock the boat at the end of the fairway. We stern in, so while he maneuvered the boat to get in our slip, Tasha could have touched the other boat across the fairways bow pulpit from ours had she been out on it. We got in with no issues! Could have been costly. We were docked between two Hatteras! In additional to the marina, the Wharf is a large commercial complex with a large condominium building, stores and restaurants, a movie theatre, amphitheater, and ferris wheel. We took advantage of several of the restaurants, the ice cream store, and the movie theatre. We enjoyed the new James Bond 007 movie.

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We have struggled with a securing a plan for marinas and this has caused great angst with the first mate. For the better part of the last week, Tasha worked the phones non-stop. At this point, it wasn’t so much as to where do we want to go as it was where can we find a slip?

We inquired at The Wharf, but true to most of the south, nothing. This has happened a lot. We finally got a couple breaks and places we think we will enjoy. We secured Clearwater through the end of December, January in Fort Myers, and March in Marathon. If you are going to be near any of these places, please let us know, we would love to meet up with you! We still need to work on February but compared to a week ago, we’re feeling good!

There are several major factors making securing dockage much more difficult this year than past years. We know plenty of people who have winged it in the past and always had a slip when and where they wanted. There are more boats doing the loop than ever because it is becoming more popular, people are working from the boat/home, and many didn’t loop in 2020. The second is more people have purchased boats in the last year that many years prior and are filling up the marinas with annual dockage leaving less transient dockage. And lastly, the last few years we have had several devastating hurricanes take out a lot of marinas that just haven’t built back yet or aren’t going to. All these factors play a part in cruisers getting docks. Many of the winter destinations were asking for 3 months or more contracts and weren’t willing to do less until November. So that is why we have been able to secure a few in the past week with dozens of phone calls.

The Wharf was another place we could have stayed longer as there was so much to do and see (we say that a lot, but we like most of the places we go!). Now it’s time to make our way towards Apalachicola or Carrabelle for the gulf crossing so we can get to Clearwater.

It will take us about a week to get to Carrabelle and get set up for the crossing, so we moved next to Palafox Pier in Pensacola. Palafox Pier was right in the heart of downtown and the historical district. The city park was bustling around us. We were able to walk to great restaurants, shops, and parks for Remy. The downtown is very dog friendly, so Remy went with us and was spoiled rotten by the wait staff (I am sure some customers were less than thrilled). We even were able to take in the Veterans Day Parade. A rush of pride for our country and this town that is home to the Blue Angels and military abound!  We salute those who serve so we can enjoy this great country! A couple of beautiful sunsets from the marina over the bay were stunning.

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Remy was excited as a group of girls had asked to board our boat for a photo opportunity. No photo will take place on our bow without Remy front and center. They were a volleyball team from Kansas and Remy certainly enjoyed the attention!

Our marina at the pier had been ravaged by hurricane Sally last September. Being from the mid-west, you don’t realize the devastation (tv just can’t show it in its entirety) and how long it takes to rebuild. The Pier has rebuilt twice but a city owned retaining wall has holes it and fails and rips out the finger piers at the marina when there are big storm surges, so until the city fixes the wall, this marina is operating at less than 50% capacity with just outside lay along docks. It was very nice, clean, and new! We would have liked to stay longer, but there was no room at the inn for the coming days.

Part of the captain’s routine is engine checks and the night before our departure David discovered an issue in our engine room. The exhaust hose was leaking, and we needed a to replace the pipe as it could fill our engine room with water as we cruised. David scrambled and enlisted help from the dock master and made phone calls to several boat yards. No one was able to work on it soon (several weeks if at all) and no one had the hose. We stumbled onto the hose in stock at a West Marine, 5 miles away. The dock master offered to take David, another one of the kind people that have helped us along the way. Off they went to get our part. He spent the evening researching how to remove and replace this hose, something he had never done before. David shared at dinner, he wanted to do the boat work during the day in case we started sinking and needed to call a tow for assistance. What? There is a chance we can sink during this fix? And he quoted our insurance agent Al “we cover stupid!” This just might qualify!

He did it. It took a few hours with lots of words that aren’t used too often and a lot of grunting. The strength needed to manipulate hoses or anything in an engine room is meant for a young man. We had a couple of setbacks but weathered through them. West Marine was to cut the hose 21 inches long, they cut it 24”. Our fault for not double checking. We used a sawzall on the dock at 7 in the morning – hoping we weren’t waking our neighbors and that it worked!

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Tasha played grunt and was in the engine room more this day than the four years combined that we have had Now or Never. And David played contortionist winding his body through the engine and other mechanical devices. We don’t think boat engineers have ever worked on a boat inside the engine room, if they had, they would be laid out better.

By 11:00 am the captain had nailed it and turned the key, no water coming through into the engine room, we were not sinking, a good sign and I am sure we made Al, our insurance agent happy! Cruising full time is not all beautiful sunsets and cold drinks! We untied the lines and cruised to Fort Walton Beach, about a 50-mile run across the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). This leg, as well as all the legs through the panhandle we were met with the devastation of the last few years hurricanes. You could see new housing, construction, and empty lots where they had not built back yet. We spotted a view derelict boats, could be from the storms, or could be people abandoning them. The trees on the water line were starting to come back and we went through section where you could tell they were all wiped out.

We are now mostly cruising the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) which is very different than the waters we are used to. The ICW is 3,000-mile inland waterway along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts of the US running from Brownsville, Texas following the Gulf Coast to the tip of Florida and along the Atlantic Seaboard. The narrow canal is lined with houses and boat docks in many areas that give way to very rural, nature preserves, and large bays.

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We got in late to the Fort Walton Beach area so were not able to see much. We were blessed with another beautiful sunset and celebrated not sinking with a drink. It’s the little things, though sinking would have been a big thing!

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We awoke to the sound of water lapping on the hull, not just a little, a lot. We did not get a good night’s sleep. We got up at 4:30 am to check the lines as it was calm as can be when we docked.  The wind had really kicked up and our back line slipped some and we were 4- 5’ off the dock. David secured the lines while Tasha crashed on the couch. Once David is up, he’s up. He made breakfast for the crew and enjoyed the sunrise from the aft deck. The first mate caught a few more zzz’s. In the boat yard were three inflatable and center console boats. Upon inquiry, we learned that they military used them for target practice. They shot at them, brought them to the marina to fix, then shot at them again. This is a big hole!

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A walk in the morning with Remy saw that we were nestled into a neighborhood, and you could walk to the Tom Thumb grocery and a few restaurants. We weighed our options of staying as the wind was still very strong and there had been a few warnings from other mariners and a small craft warning by the coast guard. We spotted a fellow looper with our tracker on Choctawhatchee Bay. We had traveled with them on the Tenn-Tom and using our tracker messaging system, we contacted them to see what it was like on the bay. They indicated rolly but doable. We made the decision to head out. It was a bit rolly at first, but things calmed down and it was a good 67-mile cruise.

We have been watching the weather for the Gulf of Mexico crossing from the panhandle to Clearwater. One of our predictors (a guy who does it for our cruisers club) says he sees a weather window that may be good for a crossing on Monday night. This may be the only window until around Thanksgiving. So we keep motoring eastward to set ourselves up for the crossing and traveling on this rolly day was needed to get us to where we needed to be for the crossing.

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The crossing is about a 200-mile trip from the Apalachicola / Carrabelle area in the panhandle to the Tarpon Springs / Clearwater on the west coast of Florida. Most cross at night as it is a 17 – 20 -hour trip (depending on where you start and end) for slow boaters like us around 10 mph.  Boats want to leave in the daylight and arrive in the daylight (after 10 am because of the sun) to watch for crab pots near shore. The pure darkness doesn’t matter as you are near nothing, so you just keep your course. Fast boats or those that don’t mind burning a lot of fuel may do a day crossing. David has been looking forward to this leg of the trip for years.

We arrived in Panama City Beach and docked next to the pirate ship and Remy found our dock box there waiting for us!  

Marinas in this area are hard to come by (many destroyed in hurricanes) and there wasn’t much around just a couple of tourist traps, and the preparation for their Bethlehem Village. We planned to leave early the next morning as our weather window was shaping up for a crossing in two days. The next days cruise would be 70 miles (a long day) so we would end in Apalachicola. It would have been better to be in Carrabelle, though we just weren’t sure we could make it and the boats were stacking up there (maybe no docks). Apalachicola was difficult. There are four places to stay (we only knew of three prior), and they all have limited docks. They range from $2 – $4 a foot. This is a dock, some with, some without power and water and not anything else. We haven’t seen $3-4 rates anywhere yet. We will but they will be loaded with amenities. The two largest amenity places on the river (pool, showers, restaurants, tennis, ship store, fuel, internet, courtesy cars, etc.) were $1.40 and $1.50 per foot. We realize location and they have the market, but $3 and $4 is price gouging! We luckily got into a cancellation spot at the $2/foot wall with water and power.

The cruise to Apalachicola showed the devastation from hurricane Michael in October of 2018. We drove this route in February of 2019 and had never seen anything like it. Panama City through Mexico Beach to Port St Joe, most of it was just gone. The devastation is still seen today. Much of it has not built back. And the nature areas still look sick and sad. As we wound around the ICW, we saw boats that had sunk and remained, fishing shacks that had sunk on the ICW, and the tree lines which looked like a weed whacker had cut them off several years ago and were still lacking in luster. We arrived in the quaint fishing village. More than 90% of Florida’s oyster production was harvested from Apalachicola Bay in past years. Today the oyster industry as completely collapsed do to pollution and lack of water flow in the Apalachicola River.

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We had started to see dolphins once we entered the ICW. However, each time we tried to photograph them, all we could capture were the circle ripple on the water.

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It got to the point we just started to enjoy when we saw them and not get caught up in photographing or videoing them. This was the day they put on a show and swam along with us for the greater part of the day. They would circle the boat, play alongside and flip water up onto the bow. But their favorite spot was cruising along right where the bow meets the waterline. You can’t really see them by standing on the bow, you must lean over and look back. Dave captured great video with the go pro on a stick. It’s just the coolest sight to see these creatures of the sea recognize you and your vessel, cruise along, and put on a show. This is something we will not tire of.

In Apalachicola, we viewed a pretty sunset out over the bay, Remy played dock Queen and laid on the pier and welcomed the two boats who joined us, the two dogs on one boat, and others who stopped by to talk. We had a great dinner in a very popular spot, The Tap Room at the Owl Café.

We were able to snag a table before it became standing room only inside and out. Remy enjoyed her walk around the village, and we spied three racoons walking down the sidewalk with no fear of us a mere 20 feet away. That got the old girl excited.

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We will plan our course for the big crossing and share with you on the other side!

Cheers! D, T & R

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