Fort Walton Beach & Thanksgiving in Panama City

After leaving Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola, we headed for the free dock at Ft. Walton Beach.  This dock is provided by the city for one overnight stay but has no power.  It is a chance to get off the boat without using the dinghy however and it does have water on the dock so we avail ourselves of it when we come through. We joined the boat Negotiator which was already there.  We noticed a number of people setting up tables and staging in the park next to the dock and went up later in the evening when a band was playing.  We found out that it was a church that was throwing a party for all of the volunteers that helped make the church function each week.  It was good to see this happening.

We had decided to try to run from Destin to Panama City on the outside just because we hadn't done it before and so we stuck our noses out at Destin inlet and found that the gulf had not calmed enough to be comfortable for that trip.  We turned around and came back in and traveled on the ICW on over to Panama City.  We did get a good view of Destin Harbor on our way by.

We arrived at Panama City and anchored in Watson Bayou next to Carl & Greg Vernon's house. wI Love Lucy rafted to us and we had dinner with RoyEl who was already there and tied up at the Vernon's dock.

 

The next day I went with Ed on I Love Lucy to drive back to Mobile Bay to retrieve their car.  That took most of Saturday and we had dinner with Carl & Greg that evening.  On Sunday we borrowed Carl's truck and went to the church we had attended last year while we were in Panama City over the winter.  They were having a combined service with dinner on the grounds and it was good to see people that we had met last year.  They had good music and the kids performed.  We were treated to a great lunch.  As the pastor said "Where two or three are gathered at the church a chicken will die". 

On Monday evening we drove to Bo and Carmen Johnson's beach house and had dinner there.  It was a pleasure to see Old Grumpy's crew again.  We are still so thankful that they shuttled our car back to Scottsboro last spring.

We spent the first part of the week taking care of boat chores and looking at web sites to determine the best time to cross the Gulf of Mexico.  We all have different sites to visit and looking at them all gave us a good picture of the situation.  We had a good time visiting with Carl & Greg, Ed & Lucy and Roy & Elvie.  Carl & Greg were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for any Loopers in the area and were expecting around 30 people.

The Thanksgiving dinner was great.  We had 25 Loopers there and Greg did an outstanding job of cooking turkey, ham, stuffing and whatever else.  We all brought a side dish and I don't think anyone went away hungry.

After Thanksgiving we decided to move to Massalina Bayou in downtown Panama City.  We wanted to get out of Carl & Greg's hair and get settled in for what appeared to be about a week of bad weather before we would be able to make a crossing of the Gulf.  We were able to tie up in some abandoned slips that Carl was aware of and it has been good to be able to wander into town.  We walked to the First Baptist church on Sunday and attended their service.

We think we will now be here until Friday when we will make our move over to Appalachicola and then to Carabelle to stage for crossing the Gulf.  We think the conditions will be right for a Saturday night or a Sunday night crossing.  We will know more the closer we get to that time.  In the mean time, we are having rain today and will have much cooler weather tomorrow.  Hopefully the gulf will calm down after this front moves through and we will have a good crossing to Tarpon Springs.