Shalimar to Santa Rosa Beach, FL

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January 1, 2023: I head out late, in the fog, on a short cruise to another anchorage.

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(continued from At Shalimar, FL)

Although my next marina stop was Panama City, I got a late enough start out of Two Georges Marina in Shalimar that I decided to stop at an anchorage along the way. It meant traveling almost all the way east on Choctawatchee Bay, the body of water between the Florida Panhandle’s mainland and the peninsula-turned-island just south of it.

Heading Out In Fog. Again.

It had been weeks since I cruised in the fog, but with the sky brightening more and more as time ticked away and patches of foglessness drifted by, I was ready for another round. At the marina, my boat was already pointed in the right direction away from the dock. I started the engine, warmed it up, cast off, and motored away at idle forward speed: about 2.5-3 knots. It was 1 PM, a very late start to a cruising day for me.

Visibility was probably about 1/4 mile tops. I set a relatively slow speed — probably around 5 knots — and followed my chartplotter’s track from arrival to get around the point and out into the bay, avoiding the charted shallows. I got glimpses of the land on my port side. I waited until I passed red marker #2 before opening it up a little and heading out into the whiteness, trying to remember to hit the horn button for a good blast every two minutes.

It was plenty bright and I could see blue sky, but the fog was settled on the water and visibility was less than 1/4 mile for the first 40 minutes of my cruise.

Meanwhile, there was chatter on the radio. One guy, who was apparently very nervous about driving in the fog, was making a lot of radio calls related to his proximity to a bridge in either Destin or Fort Walton Beach. I couldn’t tell because I didn’t know the area well enough. All I knew was that I wasn’t going anywhere near those two bridges so I didn’t have to worry about him. Someone else on the radio seemed to get fed up and made a comment suggesting that if he couldn’t deal with the fog, he shouldn’t come out in it. I know there was more to it than that, but the second guy’s commentary was dumb and it shouldn’t have been on Channel 16, which is for hailing and advisories. I almost said something, but decided against it.

Meanwhile, all the sounds around me in the fog seemed amplified. At one point, I heard a boat coming nearer and nearer to me at high speed. My radar showed a target passing me to the south, going the same direction I was but a lot faster. One of these fishermen in their fancy center consoles, I figured. Some of them think they’re indestructible.

The fog lifted suddenly all around me and I could see south to Destin. After that, the fog was mostly off in the distance, but it lifted before I arrived at my destination.

By 1:40 PM, the fog had lifted enough for me to see a bridge across the bay far in the distance.

A Peaceful Cruise

After that, the cruise was uneventful. I was sitting up top on the command bridge, enjoying the sunshine with my pups sleeping on the seat next to me. My bimini top was still folded up; no need to deploy it when I didn’t need shade. The air was still cool and a bit damp from the fog. I wore a hoodie over my t-shirt, but I soon stripped that off to let the sun hit my skin.

The water was like glass. If there’s one bit of weather you can predict from the presence of fog, it’s wind: if there’s fog, there’s little or no wind. With no wind to speak of, there was no chance of waves building up on that completely enclosed bay. So the water went from glassy smooth to barely just a ripple. It was an extremely smooth ride.

I passed a sailboat that may have been drifting; I didn’t see an anchor line and it didn’t seem to be moving under power or sail. (It’s kind of hard to sail when there’s no wind.) Then I saw a large target far ahead of me on radar and a tow appeared in the distance, out of the last bits of fog. We passed port to port.

I know it’s hard to see in this photo because my chartplotter screens don’t photograph well, but that big red blob on the upper right side of the screen is a radar target — in this case, a tow.

Here’s the tow my radar saw.

We passed port to port. I admit that I was surprised to see it here, given the narrow channel at the end of the bay that I’d be traveling through the next day. Is that where it had come from?

The day got warmer and warmer until it was uncomfortably warm up there in the sun. Deploying the bimini top was not an option — the new canvas was so tight that it required an extra hand to hold it forward while supporting pins were put in place. With no one around me in any direction, I did what I needed to do: I took off my shirt. The sun felt great and I wasn’t hot anymore.

I should mention here that driving the boat in a straight line down the middle of a bay wasn’t much of a challenge — or a chore. As usual, I put my autopilot’s Heading Hold feature to work. All I did was keep an eye out for other traffic or obstacles or junk in the water. There wasn’t much of any of that. I texted back and forth to my other boating friends, too. Kim and Ted in Pony were now behind me. Their boat was at Two Georges but they were driving back from a holiday trip to Ohio. Connie and Michael in La Principessa were ahead of me. I think that at that point they had already made it to Steinhatchee. We all chatted via text every day.

I must have let my attention drift because a boat suddenly came up from behind me and passed about 100 yards off my port side. I put my shirt back on.

Anchoring

Bay Bridge, which crosses Choctawhatchee Bay near its east end, has four anchorages: one on either side of the bridge on either end of the bridge. I’d selected the southwest one because of wind forecasts. Although not much wind was forecasted, it was out of the southeast so it made sense for me to be northwest of any sheltering landforms. I had Santa Rosa Beach to the south and the causeway leading up to the bridge to the east.

I approached the bridge in the marked channel and then turned south, following my chartplotter for guidance on water depth. I passed a sailboat already anchored much farther north and a lot closer to the causeway. With no wind or current to guide me, I put the boat in neutral, got out onto the bow, and use the foot button to drop the anchor. Then I went back inside and backed the boat up gently to lock the anchor in place. I honestly didn’t know then how successful I was because I couldn’t see the chain while I backed up. I went back out on the bow and put out pretty much all 50 feet of my chain. I’d take a wait-and-see approach, as usual, to see how well we held. I set an anchor alarm to make that easy and shut down the engine.

The Bay Bridge from my anchorage just before sunset. The sailboat was anchored just out of this frame, on the left.

It was 4 PM. I’d covered just over 22 nautical miles.

Here’s my Nebo log for January 1, 2023. Download a PDF log file with more info. Track Do It Now on Nebo.

At the Anchorage

Once again, my pups were pretty disappointed to see the green mat on its tray where I expected them to do their business. I put it down on the deck, reminded them what it was for, and tried to ignore their disappointed little faces.

And I wasted no time getting my dinner ready. I had a NY strip steak in the fridge that I had to eat before it went bad. I also had fresh green beans and some (admittedly instant) mashed potatoes. I was going to make myself a grilled steak dinner — which I did.

I successfully resisted the urge to cook the green beans in the microwave — to save power, I told myself — and I’m very glad I did. I cooked them to al dente perfection on the stovetop after preparing the mashed potatoes. The steak grilled up nicely on the grill I’d bought to replace the one stolen way back in Peoria, IL. I still didn’t like the grill as much as my old one, but at least there wasn’t much of a learning curve to get a steak grilled up right.

I fed my pups, coaxed them to use their pee place, and rewarded them with bits of cheese. Around us, the fog was coming in from the south. I could imagine it out over the ocean as it drifted north across the Santa Rosa Beach toward us. By dark, we’d be in the thick of it again.

I had barely finished dinner before the fog started rolling in from the south.

I closed the boat’s windows against the damp chill of the evening air and retired inside to read in bed. The boat rocked gently at anchor and my anchor alarm stayed silent.

(continued in Santa Rosa Beach to Panama City, FL)