Made It To Steinhatchee

And we plan on staying for a day

We're going to lay over here in Steinhatchee for a day to rest and enjoy.  Besides, the Gulf of Mexico has just a little bit of chop on it today and we're big on playing it safe.  We're staying at the "Sea Hag Marina".

Our temporary home in Steinhatchee

   

Especially not the one that is stalking us





Fisherman at work

The neighbors

Still having some trouble with the blog manager, hope to figure out what I'm doing wrong to cause the format to foul up.  At any rate we left Steinhatchee yesterday at about eight o'clock in the morning and started across the Gulf of Mexico toward Apalachicola, still in Florida but on the Panhandle.  It is a quaint little shrimping town with lots of good restaurants and shops to look in.

However, the trip here was no picnic.... about a quarter way into our ten hour trip, one engine started smoking and heating up.  We shut it down and crossed on one engine at about ten miles an hour.  Well, one thing isn't bad, right?  Right, if only one thing goes wrong. But as luck would have it, as we came into Apalachicola and were in contact with the marina where we were to stay, Wayne took a short cut across a mud flat that had too little water on top of it.  We were grounded again!  Out came the Tow Boat U.S. .  Wayne says to me, "I sure am glad you got the Gold membership". " Me, too", I said, "Let's have a beer."  It took the Tow Boat from 9 o'clock until 11 o'clock to get us unstuck, which is when high tide arrived.  By the time we got docked in the dark, I simply took a shower and fell into bed.  Wayne wasn't far behind me, just a different bed.

First thing this morning, we arranged for a little transportation.  Because I still can't walk comfortably and there are things we need to do like go shopping, do the laundry and buy some charts (so we know where to go to from here 'cus ours ran out), we needed "wheels". 

It's Wayne and I at the drive up teller

Coming up is a picture of  Jeff and I in the tender.  We are carrying the anchor out in front of the boat and dropping it into the water, then letting the boat try to drag/winch itself off the mud flat.  I saw it done in a pirate movie once. It didn't work.  Wayne said if it had worked, then that wouldn't have counted as a grounding against him.  I think he makes up the rules as he goes along.  Maybe it was the beer talking.

 A shot of some of the local flavor.  Mitchell was sitting in the back of the golf cart shooting pictures like crazy for this really is a cool little town.

 

 Well, seeing as how I haven't put anything on the blog in a couple of days, I think I had better stop playing with this and publish it.  We will probably spend a couple of nights here depending on the repairs to the engine and then get back on the Gulf Intra-coastal Waterway (GIWW).  I'll let you know what are next stop is when we figure it out.