A few more pictures of Tarpon Springs.

Food is important, so Carolyn had the Mousaka (eggplant casarole).

We had greek salads.

I had the charbroiled octopus.

The trolly system.

An actual working sponge boat.

Tarpon Springs

The sail from Carrabelle was fantastic. It took 30 hrs. altogether. Here are a few pictures along the way and arriving in Tarpon Springs.

A very smooth and beautiful sail for the Gulf this time of the year.

A gorgeous sun rise after a long night.

The Anclote Key lighthouse coming into Tarpon Springs.

Tarpon Springs.

Going to get diesel fuel in Tarpon Springs.

A few more pics from Carrabelle. We will blog again when we reach Tarpon Springs.

An actual clock in town.

The bridge in Carrabelle we bicycled acrossed to get to the Pirate's Cove.

Pirate's Cove restaurant.

We are in Carrabelle, Fl. It is a small quaint town with not much to do but we found a few interesting sites. Tomorrow we will stage out by Dog Island and head across the Gulf for Tarpon Springs Sunday morning.

Oystering.

Nice shot of more oystering.

Moondance at the Moorings in Carrabelle.


Arrrgh ! We sailors did partake of the brew and slaw dogs. Yep, that's right, hot dogs with cold slaw, not bad at all. We were at Pirate's Cove restaurant.

That's right folks, you've heard of it, now you've seen it.

Apalach

Finally got on to site to upload a few more pics. Enjoy.

Sacks of oysters just coming in and being weighed.

Water Street Hotel in background.


Shrimp boat docks.

Panama riding in the dinghy.

(We've been gone way too long.)

Peace !

Apalachicola, Fl.

Here are some pics from Apalach.

Down town.

Water Street Hotel and Marina.

Marina is behind hotel.

Marsh behind slips.

There are dozens of beautiful homes in Apalach.

Apalachicola, Fl.

Hi everyone, we are in Apalachicola, Fl. and are doing OK. We were here a week and have several pictures to upload but unfortunently the site or the speed of our connection prohibits sending them. We post them at the first op. we get. It is very nice here but time to move on. We hope to be in Carrabelle by tomorrow afternoon and will stage from there for our jump across to Tarpon Springs.

We are now in Apalachicola, Fl. and we took a few pictures along the way. It was a very nice trip down the Gulf County Canal to the ICW and the Apalachicola River. We were going to stay a day or two then head for Clearwater but a very large cold front is coming and our window closed for the crossing. For those who may be wondering, a weather window is a period of relatively calm weather just before or after a front. I perfer a 48 hr. window with winds and waves from the right direction. If it is coming from the general direction that we are traveling to, it needs to be very low winds and seas. The more it swings aft the more we can handle. If it comes from directly behind us we can travel in 20 kt. winds with 8-10 ft. seas but we would try not to go out into anything worst than that. It is possible and has happened, that the forecast misses it a bit and we can get caught in worse conditions. It can still be safe enough but we do not enjoy it.

Entering the Gulf County Canal.

Sandbar at entrance to canal.

ICW

Palm trees among the bald cypress.

A Bald Eagle along the ICW.

A few more pictures from Port St. Joe.

Carolyn was fascinated that Palm trees were growing next to Pine trees.

Down town Port St. Joe.

Oysters and coral growing on the back of a motor boat. We don't want this happening to Moondance so it's time to move on.

We are in Port St. Joe. It is a very nice place and the whole town can be walked with no problems. Everyone is very nice and the live-a-boards and marina personel are very helpful and friendly. We were invited last nite for a soup supper onboard the Pasty-Ray, a troller and met several of the cruisers. As much as we would like to stay, we know that we need to move on, the next chance we get.

Port St. Joe marina.

Really nice facilities and reasonably priced.

Moondance in Port St. Joe.

Trip from P.C. to Port St. Joe

Carolyn and I finally got a chance to leave out of Panama City and headed for Port St. Joe. It was a surprise for us, with the good forecast that we had, to get the weather that we got. We had 10-12 ft. seas and 20 kt. winds with gusts to about 25 kts. The only blessing was that the seas were on our starboard quarter which helped push us along at a good speed, in fact we surfed down the face of the waves ocassionally doing 7-8 kts. Carolyn did really well holding our course on her watch. We only really shipped water once and that was during my watch, and I got drenched from head to toe and completely through.

A Navy hoover craft in the bay as we were leaving Panama City.

It was very loud and fast.

A bit rough ! A good 12 footer.

We picked up a stow-away in Panama City

We decided we needed a boat mascot so we named it Panama and will let it stay on board as long as it wants.

Since we have bad weather coming in tomorrow and not enough time to get to the next port safely, we went across the bridge to Panama Beach itself. We used the public transportation system for this. It is called the Bay Town trolly system and is fairly easy to use and not expensive. We walked across the highway from the marina and caught the trolly for the route we wanted and paid $3 each for a day pass which includes all transfers to other routes if we want. We also went to a Winn Dixie while we were there to do our shopping.

One of the trollies.

The beach.

We were told to try the $1.99/doz. raw oysters and $1.49 margaritas at Pier 77, so naturally we did. We had two dozen raw oysters and four margaritas for total of just over $10 and they were excellent. For sure this is one place we will miss.