Another forecast mistake...but this one in our favor

I intended to get up at 6 a.m. on Tuesday to do the final departure chores from Destin Harbor. Instead, I awoke at 3 a.m. I decided to walk up to the restroom by the marina office so I wouldn't wake up my new crew, Ryan and John, with the noise of our manual pump toilet. When I got back, they were both awake asking if it was time to go. I laughed and told them they could get three more hours of sleep. This crew was ready for action!


When we finally did depart at 6:30, I was THRILLED to see the waters in Destin Pass. It looked like a lake compared to what I had come through a week earlier. I tried to explain to John and Ryan what it looked like, but it was one of those things you just had to see to believe. I found out by researching the offshore data buoys that Barry and I had navigated 8-10 foot seas. This day, the seas were 1-2 foot...a piece of cake.

At 7:00 a.m., we rounded the last buoy and set our chart plotter for the entrance pass to St. Andrews Bay, 43 nautical miles ahead. The computer said we would be there at 1:30 if we maintained our present speed of 6.5 knots. The wind was blowing out of the NE at about 10 knots, but the forecast was for the wind to swing around to the ESE, exactly where we were pointed. I decided to go ahead and put up the mainsail because the wind was building. I figured we might as well use it until the wind changed to the forecasted direction. Guess what. The weatherman missed it again. It never did swing around, so we motor-sailed all morning and arrived at the pass at 1:00 p.m. -- thirty minutes ahead of the original projection. In addition to the added speed, the sail made the ride so much smoother. The sail acts like a giant wind vane to slow the pitching and yawing creased by the rough seas.

Late in the morning, we saw a huge naval vessel off in the distance -- in fact right at the pass we were heading to. An hour later as we got very close, we saw a rigid inflatable boat full of Navy Seals slide down a ramp between the catamaran hulls into the Gulf with a splash. I was getting so close that I called the captain on the radio and he told me to hold my course and he would turn out of our way. Even the Navy was moving out of the way of Agaliha! John got on his smart phone and learned that the experimental vessel, named Sea Fighter, is super stealth and capable of 50 knots plus speed.


We turned into St. Andrew's Bay and anchored behind beautiful Shell Island. We spent a beautiful sunny afternoon on the deck watching jellyfish swim by. Ryan had wanted to dive for crabs, but the jellyfish were a strong deterrent. We made a great dinner of the Royal Red Shrimp we had bought in the seafood market the day before.





Wednesday's trip to Port St. Joe was a carbon copy of the trip to Panama City, only shorter. We motor sailed to the entrance buoys. The trip from there to the Port St. Joe Marina was a long one because the sound is HUGE. The marina was very nice and clean -- and they seemed glad to have us. They bill themselves as the Friendliest Marina on the Panhandle. The little town is friendly and quaint. That's a nice way of saying it is dead. We had a very good meal at a local restaurant and then stopped in the local bar to get a nightcap and shoot some pool. The 10 aged locals in the bar were taking turns at the karaoke microphone. We got a lot of entertainment for our $4 drinks!


Tomorrow's itinerary is a 25-mile hop through the Gulf Intra Coastal Waterway to Apalachicola. The weather forecast is good and the fall days here are just beautiful -- even if the bars aren't.




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