Day 158 & 159: Travel to Carrabelle
Day 158: December 23: It was a lovely day, bright blue skies and not too much wind; a great day to travel to our next stop in Carrabelle, located along Florida's Panhandle. Called the Gateway to the Gulf, the town is rich in marine history and small-town nostalgia.
It looked like a good day to run the sea trial wizard to try to recalibrate the autopilot once again. Unfortunately it acted up yesterday, not staying on course. It seems likely that moving the fridge/freezer away from where we thought the compass was didn't solve the problem. John called Neil who installed our system to pick his brain about a possible cause. During the conversation a light bulb went off. John remembered we had moved the old hydraulic steering pump, which is loaded with magnets, into the v-berth head. When Neil told him the compass had been installed in the wall in there and not under the helm as he originally thought, it became clear that the magnetism in the pump was the real culprit. Anxious to correct the situation, we alerted Paradise and Summer Fling to go ahead and we would catch up.
The area around our anchorage was very calm so we were able to accomplish the first step in the process. This requires spinning the boat 1 1/2 times while keeping the boat as calm and steady as possible. We were very pleased to see a score of 84 after completion. This was excellent and a huge improvement from our previous scores of 13 and 24.
We headed out onto Apalachicola Bay behind Summer Fling and Paradise, searching for just the right stretch of water, straight and wide enough to perform step 2 (the 15 cycles of zig zags) and step 3 (straight ahead on cruising speed for at least 45 seconds).
The bay is protected from the Gulf by two islands; St. George and Dog so we were able to find a good section of water to perform the last two steps.
We pulled into C-Quarters Marina on the Carrabelle River. The dock pilings are located right at the beginning as you pull into the slip. There are no docks along the starboard or port; tying up on this kind of dock is trickier than ones that have cleats to grab. Luckily dock hands were ready to help us back in and tie up safely. Once we were tied, John got on Summer Fling to help them back in. Mona did a great job looping the line over the piling!
Day 159: December 24: Overcast but still warm. John did our laundry and I walked up the street with Mona and Frank to the Dollar General. Frank was looking for a hardware store but everything was closed including Fathoms, a seafood restaurant close to the marina. We were hoping to have dinner there but we were out of luck. We laughed when we zoomed in on the fisherman's shirt in the picture. It says Team Murphy; kind of funny thinking back on all the trolling, "juggin" and trot line fishing we did with David and Sandra!
Although Carrabelle is home to miles of pristine white sand, this area seems pretty run down; so many of the shops are shuttered, looking like they have been closed for a long time. The city does boast the world's smallest police station which came into being on March 10, 1963. The town had been having problems with tourists making unauthorized long distance calls on its police phone located in a call box bolted to a building on Tallahassee Street. Police officers would often get drenched when answering the phone. The problem was solved when the phone was placed inside a phone booth being discarded by the St. Joe Telephone Company.
The phone booth has since suffered from assault; people continued to try to use the phone so the dial was removed, vandals have ripped the phone out and shot holes through the glass, a truck knocked it over, a tourist from Tennessee once tried to load it into his vehicle so he could take it home and it was damaged by Hurricane Kate.
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