On to Panama City

We didn't make it quite as far Saturday evening as we had hoped due to the burnt connector but we made it far enough, we are off the dock!  The next day was light wind which was great since we were going to have to motor anyway through the ICW or The Ditch in our section of the route.  We made it to Panama City and anchored off of the St. Andrew's Bay Yacht Club.  We have always enjoyed visiting this club on our way west or south.  This great club took a tremendous hit with Hurricane Michael but they are striving to stay open and viable.  It was closed on Sunday and Monday but we did chat with the club  manager and they are well into plans for full recovery.  We wish them well and truly hope to see things repaired and restored on our next visit.  I'm going to split this post into 2 sections since there as so many pictures of the area to post. so for pictures of the town see the next post.

Looking forward to the way East along the Intracoastal Waterway.

Looking back for a last homeward view.  The ditch was dug to connect the bays.  The
Corp of Engineers also used existing creeks and waterways whenever possible in the overall
design of the entire ICW.  If you look on a chart you see that it goes from Brownsville TX up
the East Coast  to the Chesapeake.

The steep sides of a section of the ditch.  This is soft sand that easily erodes with
the Panhandle's 60 inches of annual rainfall.  Unlike the canyons out west that see
little rain and erosion is from rivers.

This big tug was running and holding the barge against the shore so it could be
offloaded to the gravel dump.  Passing his running exhaust wake was a bit of a
trick as the shore was just off to the other side.

Not sure what sunk this barge but it still had gravel in it.  You can see the pile of
gravel being offloaded from the barge in the previous picture.

Good to see the Panama City waterfront back in business.  If you saw the
Weather Channel coverage of the storm, you saw a railcar on it's side only
a few hundred yards away from this ship.  They had a massive cleanup effort

Pilot boats waiting for their next job.

A brand new and shiny cell tower.  When we were here volunteering
at Thanksgiving the towers were all down and cell service was being
provided by truck mounted assemblies.