11/20/2012 – Tuesday – Panama City to Destin

S/V Morning Star headed out of Bay Point Marina around 6:00 AM for their offshore trip to Destin and we headed out about fifteen minutes after for our ICW trip.  The winds were calm and the water was flat, a great day for us on the water!  Off and on we would see pods of dolphins playing and jumping in the water and when going through the “canyon” area we saw some wildlife this time.  One thing we learned on this trip is that ospreys and eagles look alike so we are not sure what we are really seeing (maybe both!).  At some of the marinas you can hear the Osprey(s) and if you look around you can see them resting on the top of the sailboat masts. 

We arrived at our Destin anchorage around 2:00 PM and as we were getting ready to set our anchor at the same spot as before our windlass (this part puts out and brings up the anchor) stopped working (click, click, click was all we got).  This is not good!  Josh checked different things but it just would not work.  This part if essential to boaters to raise and lower the anchor and we will need this to complete our trip back to Texas because we have several anchorages on our way back.  We are thankful that this happened before the anchor was put out otherwise it would have to be pulled in by hand (no Daniel power!).  Pulling in 100 feet of chain and a large CQR anchor would be backbreaking work! We need to find a dock!  When we did the driving trip here several days ago we found a nice man that runs Aloha Pontoon Boat Rentals who said we could tie to his dock.  All of these boat rental docks do not have power but that was our least concern!  We headed to the Aloha dock and temporarily tied to the other side of it until all his rentals returned.  The dock that we were temporarily tied to was empty but he said the owner of that place is not a nice person and would not let us stay there.  No problem, by 5:00 PM when all his rental boats were back and packed in to make room for us, we moved in and settled for the night.  Josh was already busy checking out our anchor situation and options.