Boca Ciega to Clearwater and across the gulf

We have now crossed the gulf from Clearwater to Apalachicola.  We picked Wednesday night to make this crossing with a forecast of 2 ft seas, winds 10-15kts.  That's about what we had and as the night progressed into early morning the wind died to almost nothing.  There's not much to show in the way of pictures as it was really, really dark.  No moon at all.  We made our way from Boca Ciega, just west of Tampa Bay, to Clearwater and exited the ICW at Clearwater Pass.  Then made a straight line from Clearwater to Dog Key just east of Apalachicola, ducked behind Dog Key and St. George Island to the Apalachicola River and stopped at Apalachicola after 24 hrs underway.  Molly had her legs crossed.  She was never so ready to get OFF the boat.  On our way to Clearwater we had more dolphins playing in our wake.  I tried to get more pictures but I got soaked by their splashing.  Here's a picture of dawn on the gulf.

The water color before sunset was incredible!

When we stopped at Apalachicola, the dockmaster said we could use his golfcart to go to the store if we liked, so we took advantage to pick up a few things, and, of course, Molly had to go, too

Anything to get off the boat.  Here is she waiting while we're in the Piggly Wiggly.  Such a good girl!  I think she's recovered now.  Even as the boat was rolling around, she wanted us to throw her toy.  Probably a ploy to keep her mind off of how much she had to go to the bathroom.  We offered her the back deck, but no go.  Well, now the worst is over.  Tomorrow it's off to Panama City.  We are looking forward to this part of the trip and the guidebook says that from Apalachicola to Pensacola is a very pleasant trip.  We're pretty tired after very little sleep last night.

We've decided that we're running out of time and will only go as far as Mobile Bay.  We've arranged for the trucker to come get the boat in Mobile Bay instead of Galveston.  We'll miss some fun parts but we decided that we wanted to enjoy the places we get to see rather than rush through and not see anything.

So we're in the final days but the boat has been very comfortable and we've enjoyed it all, inspite of the "skinny water".