Why does anyone need radar if they never intend to travel at night?

We spent a couple of days enjoying the town of Pennsacola. It was founded in 1559 by Spaniards originally. We walked a mile or so to a great Seafood Restaurant called the Crab Trap for Grouper Gumbo and the next night found us in Chili's For Ribs. We checked out the next afternoon and returned to Fort Mcrea to prepare for our 52 mile crossing to Panama City. Now it gets interesting.

We spent a quiet night after the jet activity quietened down. We got up at 7ish and we set out for Panama City Beach around 8 for a three hour tour.... a three hour tour or in our case, what we thought was a fifty two mile shot straight across the Gulf of Mexico. Around noon we hadn't progressed very far according to my charts. Greg, from Amalia said somebody told him it was around a hundred miles. I checked around noon and my chartplotter says 56 miles to go to the entrance to Panama City Harbor! It is still five miles more after you reach the entrance.

The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew...you know where this is going. The waves built to around six feet with the odd real wild one. They were striking us on the right rear corner and tossing the boat sideways so we were surfing down the waves and wallowing in the troughs. Winds were around 17 knots with gusts to 22. The boat as usual did a great job! We were bobbing around, sometimes surfing like a Hawian sometimes wallowing like a bar of Ivory. Not too bad but it makes for a long day.

Now somebody said you won't have any trouble if you just stay a mile off shore. That wasn't the straight line however so I ended up around 15 miles out at the furthest point. Cheryl remembered this one mile thing vividly as we bounced around.

We watched the sun set. As twilight became darkness we searched the inklike horizon. Still 8 miles to go to the entrance! The rule is NEVER enter an unfamiliar harbor after dark. I still don't know how Cheryl let this happen. We found lots of flashing lights. The question was which ones should we follow? Once we were able to make sense of which markers were which we got Surona pointed in the right direction. Now the waves were hitting us on our Port side! I found the whole day a little stressfull! The Radar guided us in and right up through the maze of Flashing lights to the Panama City Beach Marina. This morning I asked the Chartplotter "How far back to where we anchored last night"? Now it says 86.7 nautical miles. I guess we should have got up earlier!

My first mate stood up valiantly through the whole day. Secretly, I think she might have been holding back a few comments.

We may take a day or two at Baypoint Marina. Bad weather to come in on Tuesday. The next leg will take us outside again from Panama City to Port St. Joe.

From The spaceous salon of the sailing vessel Surona this is Peter and Cheryl signing off for today.