Day 98
Disappointingly, Thursday, 12/17/20, dawned much like the day before – cloudy, dreary and cold. We started out that morning helming from below in the salon (for comfort), but soon found out our new humidifier was falling behind with clearing the salon windows, since it was so cold outside. So we donned multiple layers of clothing and even coats to head up into the flybridge for actual visibility. Steve has a small propane heater on board that we use with the flybridge completely closed up, which helps immensely in cold weather. On this day, the winds were 10-20 knots and the temperatures in the low 40s. BRRR! We only held out above until 9:30 am, when we gave up and moved back downstairs. Just too darned cold!
As we cruised along, we were escorted by more leaping dolphins that stayed with us for what seemed like miles, while up above the clouds we could hear the Blue Angels making practice jet-flights back and forth across the bay from where they’re based at NAS Pensacola, FL.
As we cruised through Chocktawhatchie Bay, we noticed a large, orange and white ferry that looked very familiar over on the shore. We looked through the binoculars and discovered the ferry was a Staten Island Ferry down from New York Harbor, we assumed for repairs. It was bizarre seeing a northeastern coastal icon all the way down at the Florida Emerald Coast.
The ICW joins Chocktawhatchie Bay with West Bay/Grand Lagoon through a narrow, man-made channel, known as the “Florida Grand Canyon”, that stretches about 20 miles in length. On both sides, the sand, rocks, sea grasses and coastal shrubbery meld together along with erosion to form little miniature canyons and crevices that really do favor the Grand Canyon in miniature.
Around 1:30 pm, a small miracle occurred when the glorious sunshine finally over-powered the clouds and really brightened our world! Instantly the “greenhouse” flybridge began to warm up as a result, so we shed some clothing layers and moved back upstairs to helm. Completely flipped the mood of the day by180-degrees!
Later in the afternoon, we began hearing a repeating message on radio channel 16 from the US Coast Guard, announcing “Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan (pronounced pawn-pawn, pawn-pawn, etc…) alerting area marine craft that a vessel had issued a disabled vessel distress call to the Coast Guard earlier, but failed to provide a vessel name or location. (When a minor emergency occurs on a vessel, which does NOT involve immediate fear of loss of life or vessel, the common call to use is “Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan”. If a vessel does have an immediate fear of loss of life or vessel – whether a crew member has suffered a heart-attack, or is in danger of drowning because the vessel is sinking – the call to use is “May-day, May-day, May-day.” I was not aware of this until we started this new life of ours, but now I know.) The Coast Guard announcement also requested that any vessel who’d heard the original distress call (which meant they were most likely in the same vicinity as the distressed vessel), to please contact the Coast Guard immediately, while offering assistance to the vessel if possible. Cruising is all fun and games for me until I hear these sobering announcements on Channel 16! Until the situation is resolved, the announcements are made repeatedly about every hour, to keep the situation fresh in everyone’s minds. Alarmingly, we heard that same announcement for the remainder of the day and even into the next morning!
Despite some rough waters because of the winds, we reached our anchorage in Laird Bayou at 2:40 pm, where we were pleased to have really good protection from the north winds, which meant no spinning on the hook and very little rocking that night, which is always a plus.
Position: N 30° 07.382, W 85° 31.632
Distance traveled: 77 SM
Total distance traveled: 1814 SM
Total marina nights: 81
Total nights at anchor: 16
Locks today: 0 Locks Total: 27