Days 162 & 163 - Port St. Joe

We left Panama City and headed toward Port St. Joe. The water carried us smoothly under a cloudy sky.

Somewhere along the way I noticed that Santa had visited. All the strings of beads Bob, Riley, and I had acquired during the Christmas Parade in Destin were hanging from the rail alongside the bridge, giving Osprey a festive, if gaudy holiday appearance.

Suddenly, we were dead in the water, the engine no longer humming under the floor. Knowing that the channel had been narrow most of the way, I jumped up to check our position and water depth. Luckily, we were in East Bay and there was enough deep water around us that we could drift for a bit while Mechanic Bob pulled up the hatch in the floor and began to examine things in the engine room. He diagnosed the problem as a collapsed hose from the primary filter to the lift pump—not a major problem. He could repair it when we got into port. When he asked me to restart the engine, a fuse replacement was necessary before it responded, but it did. As long as we limped along slowly, the engine would continue to run. Bob radioed the boat Sales and Nails, which we thought was behind us. Skipper Jim offered to catch up and help if we needed anything. We didn’t, but it was good to know we had backup.

We entered a narrow, sandy-sided channel, and then turned south into a narrower cut that leads to St. Joseph Bay. As we passed the fleet of colorful shrimp boats, we saw a the upper half of a sailboat's mast and rigging poking out of the water. We could only assume the rest of the boat was sunken below and wonder what had happened.

Along the side of the marked channel in St. Joseph Bay was a fisherman standing in the water - a strong reminder of how shallow the water is and how important to stay between the red and green buoys. (The fisherman is the largest of the black dots on the open water photo. The small dots are the buoys.)

We radioed the marina to announce our arrival and get a slip assignment, then turned past the breakwater and the “No Wake” sign to see a dock full of people waving and ready to grab lines for us. They’d overheard our earlier call to Sales and Nails and knew we’d had problems. We felt great relief when we were finally secure.

The next morning we took advantage of the offer of a covered slip. With the assistance of several other boaters, Bob lowered the mast so we’d fit under the arched canvas. Then we moved the boat during the only rain that occurred all day.

We can’t say enough about the friendliness of the people at the Port St. Joe Marina. The folks who work there are friendly and helpful, and the port host went far out of his way to make everyone’s stay enjoyable. He planned a dinner at Pepper’s Mexican Restaurant in town and arranged a taxi to shuttle everyone in case of rain. About 36 boaters attended and feasted on huge portions of delicious Mexican food. If Bob and I had known that the California burrito was 12 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, we would have shared one instead of ordering one for each of us.