Got an early start out of Panama City, low tide was upon us and we had to get out of Dodge before we beached.  You can see how low the water is, as just feet away from our boat is now land that was covered by water only a few hours ago.  YIKES!

…….as in previous posts, we see beached sailboats along the way, some with more intriguing stories than others.  This hurricane season was brutal to Florida.

This winter weather here in Florida is also brutal.  For the last two days our power cable was frozen.  Still got power to the boat, but when we were ready to get under way, the power cord was frozen and the cable master would not reel it in ….duct tape to the rescue!!!  We had to apply duct tape around the intake receptacle to prevent the back-splash of water from entering our electrical system…..so far so good…..by mid afternoon it warms up enough to power it in…..just a little bit of useless information………

And again, we had dolphin swimming around the boat and in our wake.  We have had dolphin sightings nearly every travel day since we arrived in Texas in November and it is always a pleasant surprise to have them swimming along side of us!  The scenery along the Florida Intracoastal is different, with both vegetation (sawgrass) and rural residential.

We were delighted to enter Apalachicola, a quaint little town in Florida.  We walked the streets while the sun was still up, it was chilly but warm enough to be outside.  The town is dotted with dozens of little shops, restaurants and museums.  Apalachicola claims to be the oyster capital of the world.  The guest register at our marina has been there for 37 years and we were surprised to see at the top of the page – Albert and Cindy, a couple we met on the Tenn-Tom waterway a month earlier.  They have now made their way to Key West aboard a vintage 1960 wooden 50 foot Chris Craft, “MissMarianne”.

We ate at the local recommended “Boss Oyster House”.  Food, oysters, shrimp and gumbo were all excellent!  There we met our new best friends, Deb and David, and Allen and Robin – from Kentucky Lake.  They are traveling by motor home and travel trailer and doing by land exactly what we are doing by water.  We all enjoyed the fresh “and famous” Apalachicola oysters for dinner.

We walked back to the boat and crashed at 7:30 p.m. (another example of “boater’s midnight”…..)