We're in Panama City, FL.

When we were driving to the boat in Carrabelle, we kept seeing lots and lots of motorcycles traveling the small backroads highways here, and now we know why.... tbe Panama City "Thunder Beach" rallye is today. The entire downtown is packed full of people, old car shows, fancy motorcycles, street food vendors and locals. It's a real happening. For dinner we had pork BBQ on a stick and a plate of noodles from one of the stalls. Not bad, actually.

We cruised the bays and ICW today with calm seas and temps near 80 degrees. A very nice day. Half of the cruising in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) was in the protected channels behind the barrier islands, and the other half was in the large bays, also protected by barrier islands. The combination of both makes it an interesting cruise day. The tide channels look like they have been dug like a canal, although some of them are natural and winding like a river, caused by tidal flows.

The natural tide channels are mostly lined with saltwater swamps and cypress trees. It's impossible to tell how far back the swamps go from the channel because the undergrowth is so thick, but it looks very deep, dark, buggy and swampy.




The tide channels connect the bays and inlets, which are wide enough to look like lakes, but frequently very shallow, requiring a marked channel to transit them in a boat that draws more than 2 ft of water.


In the big bays, the dolphins joined us and surfed our wake frequently. Since blodspot now accepts videos, I had fun shooting video of the dolphins jumping. First there was a group of three that surfed along with us on starboard for at least 10 minutes. Then they disappeared, like maybe we cruised to the end of their "territory". Then a while later, this group of five surfed our port side for about 15 minutes. They just really have fun surfing and jumping. This short video has one of the longest dolphin jumps I have ever seen. I know I put in too many dolphin shots in this blog, but I'm just enthused every time I see them.

When we arrived at the Panama City Marina, there was a US Customs and Border Protection boat just coming in. We were doing about 10 MPH and it passed us at about 40 MPH. It looks like they could go 60 MPH if they wanted to.... with FOUR 225 HP outboards! I asked the CBP agents if it was OK to take a picture of their boat and they said it was but I couldn't include their faces, They were very nice and professional men.

We're going on to Destin, FL tomorrow.