Apalachicola, City Docks

Although it made for a long day it was worth doing. And although we waited many days for the right weather window, again, it was worth doing. When the day began (around 8:30 when we hit the gulf) the wind was calm but westerlies from the night before made for small swells on the nose early in the day, maybe 1 - 2 foot. Thus the early ride was a little lumpy. By 10 am those dwindled to solid 1 footers, then to near nothing. Smooth ride for the rest of the day. In fact, I'd look out at the placid gulf in every direction and giggle. Stunning to see.

Amazing water in every direction

Given the depth and open water we decided to put our engines to a test. Rather than travel at 8.5 knots at 2300 rpm, we opened her up to 2800+ rpm, traveling mostly around 10 knots. You can see where we exceeded 10 knots on our map -- the track line is red. As the day calmed and the current changed we were over 10 knots a fair bit of the way across the gulf.

I know it's blurry but that's a house. On pontoons.
With an outboard. On the gulf.
That is a clear sign of a "GO DAY"
if ever there was one.

On a number of occasions we were accompanied by dolphins. These seemed smaller than the ones we'd been around before, and much more spry. They zipped and zigged and zagged. At one point we saw 12 of them, and they were diving and twisting in every direction near and under inQuest. I got some good footage.

Of the 10 hours journey the last 3 are in protected waters behind Dog Island and St. George Island. We successfully docked on the city wall around 5:30pm.

Behold the wiley dolphins of the Gulf of Mexico (watch your sound)(added bonus you can see Russ's feet!):