We left Sandestin reluctantly. We sure liked that place. But we are concerned about getting to Apalachicola or Carrabelle to make the crossing. We check the weather constantly. It is hard to predict what will happen in a week. But we are looking at a small opening on Saturday 12/16. We will see. In the meantime, we keep moving. 
We saw some hunters take a deer out of their boat. These folks hunt deer with dogs in boats. Not sure how they find deer in the water but we hear them on the marine radio all the time. These photos are a little blurry but we could see the dead Bambi being dragged out of the boat to the truck on the bank. Dwayne Cornell, you would have liked this. I don't think the hunters liked me taking their picture though.
Michael and Judy on One September got boarded by the Coast Guard just outside of Panama City. Judy was driving. The guys were really nice. One stayed with Judy and two went below with Michael. You can see Judy and her guy sitting at the upper station in these photos. There were at least four other CG folks in the CG boat. I think you can see them boarding in the second photo. The safety check took about 20 minutes including blowing the horn and checking the paperwork. We thought for sure they would stop us too. We've never been boarded before even in Lake Erie. It was a 2-fer for the Coast Guard after all but they did not. They got a different boat afterwards. There is nothing to be feared from being boarded. It is just funny when it happens to someone else!
We see a lot of military air traffic from the Pensacola Naval Air Station. These are helicopters passing overhead. We haven't seen the Blue Angels in a few days though. 
Just after getting boarded we turned a corner to get to Bay Point Marina and saw a jet ski jumping serious wake behind the boat ahead of us. Very very close to the back of the boat. I got a great shot!
More dolphins. I didn't get a photo of it but something really funny happened. We heard this awful slapping sound like something hit the boat on the port side. It happened a couple of times. Then Michael called from One September to tell us that the dolphins were going CRAZY next to our boat. They were actually slapping the side of the boat!!! By the time we got our cameras together they were gone!
We stayed at Bay Point Marina, a favorite of Loopers. We got there mid-afternoon, just in time to jump in a borrowed car and skip over to the beach.
Panama City had access to the Gulf beaches. Just beautiful. It reminded me of any beaches in the Carribean with crystal white beaches, relatively warm water for December, and high rises. No one on the beach at all. It was deserted. There was no one in the streets and lots of empty buildings. I guess December is low season. Clouds are building up for a storm in the next few days. But this day was pretty and warm.
We accessed the beach through an entrance in a condo building. We couldn't find any other public entrances. Perhaps we didn't look hard enough.
We met up with a few other loopers at Bay Point. We had dinner with Larry and Sherry on Lady K K who were our dock partners at the rondezvous in October, and Bill and Joyce from Carried Away who we also met at the rondezvous. Joyce knows tons of loopers so we had a chance to catch up. We really must check out her blog: carriedawaycruising.com. Both these couples live permanently on their boats. Lady KK was planning to stay at Bay Point through the holidays and Carried Away wants to complete some repairs and get under way in the next week. I bet we run into both couples in Florida after the holidays.
We only stayed one day at Bay Point, continuing to Port St. Joe the next morning. To get to Port St. Joe we had to cut across the gulf for most of the trip. The water was pretty much like a good day on Lake Erie: not flat but not too bumpy. We had less than 1 foot waves but they were square and came at us in a choppy manner.
More on Port St. Joe next.
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