In Pensacola Again

We arrived in Pensacola on Thursday after taking the Intracoastal Waterway from Apalachicola with stops at Port St. Joe and Fort Walton Beach. Those of you who got my SPOT messages saw that the ICW route took us through rivers and bays, but not the open ocean, to Pensacola. The rivers were dredged unforrmly to at least 11'8", and frequently as deep as 15'. The bays were well-marked with channel markers, and were usually at least 11'8" deep (the minimum depth set by the Corps of Engineers).

On Friday Bob Austin (Dr. Bob of Thataway) and I left at 9 AM to drive to Panama City to see Marc Groves' (Wefings) boats in the water at the boat festival. We spent most of our time poking around the new Ranger 29. We did not have time for a sea trial as we had to hit the road again to get through the throngs of college kids on spring break in Panama City (no girls gone wild, unfortunately!) We arrived in Apalachicola about 3:30 PM and immediately turned around for the return to Pensacola. We decided it would be faster to bypass Panama City by heading north to the Interstate. I don't know how long it would have taken us to go through Panama City again, but neither of us got home until about 8 PM.

The trip was hard on both of us. It aggravated Bob's bad back and in my case it sent me to the ER the next day. For a couple of weeks my left knee had been stiff, probably twisted from climbing in and out of the boat to the fixed docks that are common here. On Saturday I could not walk at all. I had to lean on Lori to get up the dock to the truck. At the ER they determined from the X-Rays that nothing was broken and most likely I had sprained my knee. I think that the drive to Apalachicola and back, where I could not move my leg appreciably for 11 hours, probably pushed my knee over the edge. They gave me some pain pills, crutches and wrapped my knee.

Saturday night Lori and I joined Bob and Marie for an excellent dinner at a local seafood restaurant -- I think it was called the Crab Shack. Today was laundry and boat-cleaning in preparation for our departure tomorrow morning. This afternoon I drove to Bob's house and went out with him on Thataway to see his home waters. We had a bit of unscheduled excitement when one of the Suzuki 150s shut down and would not respond even after changing the fuel filter. We returned home to Bob's house with one engine. He called later this evening to tell us he had found the problem -- water in the fuel system.

We are putting the boat back on the trailer for the last time tomorrow and are hitting the road west, with stops in Flagstaff, AZ and Salt Lake City. We should be home by April 7th or thereabouts.