Monday, Nov 17, Panama City, FL

This morning we woke up in Ft. Walton Beach to a beautiful sunny morning and a temp of 28 degrees. Today was a pretty easy cruise; there were long stretches across Choctawhatchee Bay which is a bay actually made up of many small bays. Then we traversed about 20 miles of a canal that is almost a duplicate of the Tenn-Tom (as you can see in the picture here).

The winds were again very calm, so the dolphins were very easy to spot. But, the manatee was a different story - one crossed directly in front of the boat and I expected to hear a loud thump as I put him out of his misery but he in some way got out of the way. It's pretty easy to get mesmerized out in a large bay of the water while looking for greens and reds off in the distance. The minute you think you see the next buoy, it gets up and flies away!

We made really good time, cruising at a constant 1100 rpm that gives us a fuel burn rate of 2 mpg. We covered about 70 miles and pulled into the Panama City Marina about 2:00 p.m. The town is pretty quiet at this time of year, but during the spring break months the number of visitors balloons to 1.5 million and the economy hops. Everyone is hoping it continues during the economic slow down this year. Here we are tucked away in the marina.

There are a lot of unique boats here. Jeff is always on the lookout for the next best looper boat and here he is checking out one that he just made a down payment on. He thinks Sally will like it because it has an automatic water maker.

Finally, when we went over to the neighboring marina restaurant for dinner, we were able to pick out some really fresh seafood. We went on board this brand new shrimper and picked out what we wanted!