Week 21

Week 21


Dec. 1-6


Monday

We left orange beach, AL this morning and also crossed into FL. This makes our 15th state I think. We stopped at a dock for the restaurant we heard about in Perdido bay. The restaurant Sunset Grill, was on a key which is defined as a small island made of sand, limestone and coral and low lying.  Many of the restaurants have docks and we pull up and eat then pull off.  No need for a car.



We traveled 27 nautical miles to arrive in Pensacola, FL to a very nice marina, Palafox pier. We saw the blue angels flying and practicing here at their home base, and saw several dolphins swimming with the boat. 



We went on a walk to check out downtown. There is some very nice shopping and a pier. 

The weather was chilly and rainy, so we stayed in the boat the rest of the late afternoon and evening. 


Tuesday

We went to the national naval aviation museum at Pensacola Naval air station first thing this morning. It was amazing and Ed was on cloud nine. It is an amazing collection of all things to do with naval aviation. We had to pay $30 extra on Uber to go back to the boat because Allison needed government ID to get on base.  Also, I brought a backpack that wasn’t permitted so we set it in the trees and left it till after.  









We had the Uber driver drop us off at walgreens to pick up the Christmas cards we ordered. We then walked the 2 miles back to the marina. The temperature was really dropping and the wind chill put it down into the high 30s. Brrrrr. I did laundry and then we went to dinner with our neighbor looper boat, Cavok, Susan and Griff Wilson.. we had a really nice time with them 


Wednesday

It was coooolllldddd this morning! We stayed in Pensacola to hold our institute class and then took off to go as far as we could in daylight. We had awesome escorts in Santa Rosa Sound- dolphins! Lots of them! See the fun videos on our YouTube channel @LoveMeFender.  We went 25 nautical miles and then dropped anchor in tfun Santa Rosa sound, Navarre anchorage. The water is so clear we can see the bottom! Ed checked our prop nut, which had fallen off in Michigan, with the GoPro. All looks good. If the air was warmer we would go swimming, but it's only 50° degrees today. 😞 







Thursday

We left early this morning to make use of the daylight. We had to go just over 70 nautical miles to Sun harbor marina in Panamá city. The water was a bit rough. It rained off and on the whole way. We had a lot of dolphins swimming with us today. They're fun to watch. We saw many hurricane damaged beached boats. It was pouring rain when we were docking. Luckily we had a dock hand to help us. 


The marina hosted a pizza party for the loopers. That was really nice. We saw some loopers we haven't seen for awhile. One man came right over right when we walked into the room. He said he wanted to meet Ed in person. He's one of our subscribers! It's so weird when that happens!






Friday

Our dear friends, Pat and Liz Sewell from Good Karma happened to be in Panama City for a funeral. They picked us up and we went to breakfast. Then they offered to drive us anywhere we needed to go which was the grocery, post office, and West Marine. We took everything back to the boat and just when we got there the sky opened up to a downpour. We got sopping wet getting our stuff on the boat. See the video!




Ed grabbed our rollers that we had ordered that didn't quite fit on our anchor pulpit. Pat's friend said we could come there and try to cut it down to the right size. It took awhile but we think we got it done right. We were just so grateful to have a ride and thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. We miss then terribly.  They were such a great buddy boat.

Ed changed the oil and filter on the boat and other checks. It's nice to get that out of the way. It's a messy job, even with the reverso automatic oil change pump we have installed.


Saturday

It was barely raining so we went for a quick walk. We knew we were going to anchor and wouldn't be getting off the boat. There was very little wind so getting of the dock was a breeze. 



We traveled about 6 hours to an anchorage. It was great and rainy all day, but not much wind. So it was a pretty smooth travel day. We went 45 nautical miles to Searcy creek anchorage. 


Sunday

We left our anchorage and traveled about 40 nautical miles to get to Carrabelle FL and in the eastern time zone again. It rained all day. We got soaked head to toe getting fuel and then getting into our slip. 

We watched football and went for a walk when it was just a drizzle and then dinner.  It has rained every day since Thanksgiving.  Every day we have been in Florida it has poured rain.  We watched the first presidency Christmas devotional on tv tonight and talked to the kids.  

See you next week …..another week in paradise for us!


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