First there is about 5 miles of salt marsh with palm trees and never-ending turns.
This is followed by a river more narrow than the Fox river at our house, but 10 to 18 ft. deep.
10 miles up river, we found a very small marina where there were no docks with deep enough water for our boat (we just need 4 ½ ft.) so for $20 they let us raft up to a 60 ft. shrimp boat tied up on a dock at the channel of the river. It works fine because we can just walk across the shrimp boat decks to that dock to walk in town.
Temps in the 70s, appetizers on the foredeck watching the river for manatees but just seeing fish and turtles. VERY nice.
All this nice stuff was after a bad day yesterday crossing 70 miles of the gulf in open waters with 6 ft waves that knocked everything off shelves that wasn’t stored correctly (mostly just books and kitchen items on countertops, knocked over the aft deck table (didn’t hurt it), scared Kathy, and made me seasick. The boat performed truly great. When we left the last buoy of the channel at Carrabelle, I got the bearing for the Steinhatchee channel entrance from our GPS, set it as the heading in the autopilot, turned on the stabilizers and let ‘er go. I reall didn’t have to touch the controls for the next 6 hours. The waves didn’t roll us because of the stabilizers, but the boat rocked forward into every big wave, hitting some hard and riding others up and down. White water over the bow all the time and windshield wipers could barely keep up. The NOAA waves forecasts were to be like that for the next 4 days, so we either had to wait a total of 6 days in Carrabelle, or go.
Today was one of the days you dream about on a Florida cruise, yesterday wasn’t. Tomorrow is supposed to be calm and beautiful again and we’re going to Tarpon Springs, so the rest of our Florida West coast trip can be in the calm intercoastal waterway.
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