Cruising the ICW from Apalachicola to Panama City

I left off the story when we were leaving Apalachicola heading for the Inter Coastal Waterway.

We turned and went back up river with our newly acquired gas in the boats, heading for the ICW and Panama City. To do this, go back through the swinging railroad bridge and keep going to where the T in the river is. Instead of turning right to go back up the river, keep going straight and the ICW will hook around to a more west, north westerly course.

In just a short time on the ICW you will come into Lake Wimico. This is a large lake that is shallow except through the channel so make sure to follow the channel markers.

My boat started acting up again, sputtering and sounding like I was running out of gas. We changed the gas filter again thinking that there might still be some water in the bottom of the tanks. It helped for a few miles but started doing it again. If I let the boat sit for a few minutes it would crank right back up and go as if nothing was wrong with it for a few miles before it would start starving for gas again. We figured that it was the fuel pump going bad and decided to go on to Panama City for repairs. I could get about 10 miles before it would start acting up and would have to let it sit for a few minutes.

Since I've been back I've had a chance to look at it. The problem was a small screen in the pickup tube in the tank was clogged up. When it sat, the debris in the tank would settle back down the tube into the tank until it sucked it back up clogging the screen again. I removed the screen and it runs fine again. My screw off gas filter catches any trash sucked up before it reaches the fuel pump and if it misses it, there is a screen in the carburetor, so the screen in the pickup tube was just redundant anyway.

Anyway, we were sitting in the middle of Lake Wimico on one of these times when the sun was just starting to set in front of us. I got some of the most beautiful sunset pictures that I have ever taken in Florida. They were so impressive that I have one as the wallpaper on my computer now.

It started getting dark but there was a pretty good bit of moon shining so we decided to go on. We turned on our running lights as we headed off across Lake Wimico. About three quarters of the way across the lake we started coming up on a large tug pushing a very large barge. It was lit up so much that we could clearly see the barge in front of it in the dark. Everything I've read about this part of the ICW said to stay in the channel in Lake Wimico because it is a very shallow lake. Knowing this, I squeezed over as far as I could to the channel marker to give him room. The tug operator shined his large spotlight over at me. Did I mention that it was a LARGE SPOTLIGHT. So I eased out past the side of the maker to give him more room. He shined the light at me again and I eased over still further. I'm getting worried about the depth of the water at this point and he still has that huge spotlight trained on me. At this point I am losing my night vision and getting pretty ticked off because the light is very bright and is starting to hurt my eyes. I heard Randy call over on the VHF for the tug boat operator. He told him to turn his light as he was blinding us. The tug operator was gruff and only replied that "he wanted to make sure we saw him" before he turned his light. In the words my son would use Duhhhh...How could we miss seeing him.

We made it around the tug and could see the end of the lake with the tree line closing in on us. I was just starting to get over being ticked at the tug guy when we entered the canal.

This part of the ICW is a canal about 25-50 yards across and is lined with cypress, palm, and pine trees. With it back dark again and our night vision returned to us, we set the boats on a slow cruise and headed down the canal. It was easy to see the channel in the dark because the trees were right on either side of the bank. Just point the boat between the trees and go.

We past a couple of small boats on the ICW that were fishing. When you get to the T on this canal keep going straight for Panama City or turn left for Port St Joe. It wasn't much farther past the cut for Port St Joe that my boat started acting up again. So I did the same routine and shut the boat off for a few minutes and waited. Randy wanted to go ahead and park under the 98 bridge to fish with the bait that he acquired from some guys in Apalachicola, so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up.

I had been sitting for about 15 minutes when Robin called me on my cell phone. She was obviously nervous and asked me to hurry up and find them because they had run aground. She said they were just past a bridge. I new she was serious and not just joking around because of the tone of her voice. I started the motor and started heading their way. They were a good 10-12 miles ahead of me. I was surprised that my boat did fine all the way to them.

When I got to the bridge Randy called me back and told me to stay close to the treeline on the left. There were a few houses with docks that I past right before I got to Randy. What had happened was that when we were going down the canal the trees were right on either side of the bank. right past the bridge the tree line to the right opened way up looking like we were coming into East Bay. It wasn't. There was a long stretch of saw grass and mud before the tree line to the right. Randy thought he was in the middle when he ran up on the mud and saw grass. He and Dana had tried to pull it off the mud but they were stuck hard. By the time I pulled up, they had gotten over the shock and were ready for me to pull them off. We got out a large rope (that we brought just for this kind of mishap) and tied it from the front of his boat to the back of mine. I hammered down and pulled for a few seconds and his boat started moving and pulled him back into the water. He started his boat and everything seemed fine until he put it in gear and found that it had a bad vibration. He figured that he had bent his prop. There was nothing we could do about it, so we went slow, hobbling along, still heading for Panama City.

Now we had two malfunctioning boats, but they were still running and still making headway, albeit slowly, so we kept moving forward.

We came into East Bay and started seeing the lights on the shore. The water really opens up here and you need to stay in the channel because it gets shallow really fast. On one occasion we veered off the channel a little bit looking at a huge shipyard where they were welding on a very large ship. We weren't off the channel much, but started feeling the sandy bottom. We lifted the lower units a little to get them out of the sand and eased it back over into the channel. When Randy lifted the foot on his boat and backed up a little a huge hunk of saw grass fell off. The vibration that he had been having immediately stopped. We felt better then, knowing that we had one good running boat if mine decided to quit and not go any further.

We were heading across the large part of the bay, following the lighted buoy markers. I was following Randy and veered off to the right a bit and ran onto a sand bar. I was stuck hard. Randy eased his boat as close to me as he could and I threw him a rope. He tried it to the front of his boat because that was the only way he could get close to me without ending up on the sandbar himself. He pulled and pulled and we almost gave up and thought about waiting for the tide to come back up when we decided to try one more time. It finally broke free and we were back on the way again.

After all of the getting stuck and pulling both boats out and because it was already about 4:00 am in the morning, we decided to tie off to the bridge and get a couple of hours sleep because we were exhausted.

The moral of this part of the story is that it is better to probably wait until daylight to navigate this part of the trip. If it had been daylight and we had not been so tired, none of this would have happened.

Randy woke me up when the sun had just started rising on the horizon. We untied the boats and headed out. We were only 5 miles or so away from the beach house that we rented. We had only gotten about 100 yds from the bridge when a wicked heavy fog rolled in over us. It was so foggy that I could just barely make out Randy's boat, only 50 foot in front of me. I tried to call him on the VHF but his batteries were dead. Same for the cell phone. So I just followed him hoping that he knew where we were going. We rode for a few minutes and turned a little, we rode some more and turned a little again, all the time not being able to see anything in front of us except the back of Randy's boat and an extremly thick fog. We rode like this for about 20 minutes and I was determined that he was lost in the fog and leading us blind..... until suddenly a buoy marker appeared to my right out of the fog. I was absolutely amazed that we were in the channel and that he actually knew where we were going. At this point I think that he is the best boat captain alive. Later on I found out that he was following a handheld GPS and staying in the middle of the bay on the tiny screen. Doesn't matter how he did it, it worked.

The fog started lifting about the time the sun came fully up and we were in sight of Shell Island. A short hop across the waterway, we went by St Andrews Park and past the Treasure Ship and Marina and Captain Anderson's Marina was to our right.

We went under the bridge going into Grand Lagoon and not too far up the lagoon, the friends of ours, that drove our trucks and trailers to the beach house, went out and stood on the dock to greet us and also to show us which dock was ours for the weekend.

I can't express in words what a great feeling it was pulling up to that dock.

We had successfully navigated over 300 miles down a river and an Inter Coastal Waterway, made it through two grounding, made it through boat problems, and we were actually there. It was almost like a dream come true at that point. Seeing the fog lifting over the bay and seeing the white sandy beach of Shell Island and seeing ourselves coming across the bay at Panama City Beach on MY boat is a memory that I will have and will cherish for the rest of my life.

Thank you my friends for helping me do this and for sharing it with me. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

You might ask me if it was worth it....it was worth every minute of it.

Pictures coming up and a little more to the story about Panama City