We saw yet another beautiful sunset before we set out for dinner in town.
The Port Saint Joe Marina is perfectly located for a trip up the Gulf Canal toward Apalachicola. We departed on Thursday morning about 9:00 a.m. and motored underneath the Highway 98 bridge into the canal about 9:30. It was the first time this crew had been in a man-made canal. It was ugly. We were bucking a 1 knot current and we were dodging hundreds of crab pots and lots of floating debris. The canal runs 5 miles north to join the Intracoastal Waterway. At the intersection, we turned east and meandered toward Lake Wimico. There were more Bald Eagles than we could count.
About noon, the narrow "ditch" opened up into a wide shallow lake, Lake Wimico, about 5 miles long. As we exited the lake, the current shifted to push us instead of working against us. We made sandwiches and motored through the railroad swing bridge that was wide open. By 2:00 p.m. we were tied up at Scipio Creek Marina in Apalachicola for the night.
We wandered around Apalachicola, eating oysters and learning about the fishing industry.
Ninety percent of all the oysters in the U.S. come from this area. The shrimp and scollop industry used to be the mainstay of the local economy, but has obviously fallen way off in recent times because of competition from foreign shrimp.
After dinner, we wandered down the waterfront and Ryan worked his way into the hold of a shrimp boat that was being unloaded at the dock. John and I were visiting with the owner of beautiful Island Packet 39 a few hundred yards down the wharf. We assumed that the shrimp boats were unloading shrimp into the waiting tractor trailers. When Ryan returned to us an hour later, we were astounded to hear that the boats were unloading "Cannonball Jellyfish," not shrimp.
It turns out that Japanese and Chinese men like to eat the meat of this jellyfish believing that it helps their sex drive. So, the former shrimpers are now filling their holds with jellyfish and shipping it to the far east.
The weather forecast was not looking good for a jump from Carrabelle to Clearwater on Saturday, which was the plan. Since I might be "locked down" for a few days waiting on the weather to improve, we debated staying put in Apalachicola since it is a bigger town that Carrabelle.
John said, "Yes, I hear there is a car rusting festival here this weekend." His point was well made -- Apalachicola is no party town. So we decided to set sail for Carrabelle the next morning.
We shoved off of the dock at Scipio Creek Marina about 8:00 a.m. The forecast was telling us it would be a cloudy day, but we had long since learned not to trust the weatherman. Early morning clouds burned off and we enjoyed a beautiful day as we motored under the highway bridge into St. George Sound. The Sound is so shallow that boaters must stay in a dredged fairway that runs due south into the bay.
After a few miles, the dredged fairway takes a 90-degree turn to the east. When we made this turn, the wind was now favorable for motor sailing so we raised the mainsail.
After passing through a huge fleet of Oyster fisherman, the dredged channel took another turn toward the northeast.
We were running ahead of schedule, so we decided to roll out the genoa and shut off the engine.
The wind was blowing about 7 knots and we were able to make about 5 knots sailing under the main and genoa.
A group of dolphins started swimming with us, knowing that we no longer had a propeller turning that was dangerous to them.
We sailed up the entrance fairway toward Carrabelle about 1:00 p.m. We called C-Quarters Marina on the radio and they said they had a transient berth for the night. We pulled up to the marina and refueled before pulling into the slip assigned to us. John and Ryan packed up their belongings and loaded them into the car of a lady who had agreed to drive them back to their car in Destin.
I hated to see them go. It had been a really good week of good weather, good food and good friends.
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