First Port Day in Apalachicola - Waiting for Weather Window

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 204 - October 21, 2017

We have at least until Thursday to wait for the weather window to cross the Gulf of Mexico, and we check Eddie's Weather WAG daily for updates. We don't want to get our fillings knocked out on the crossing, so as prudent mariners, we will wait!

I took Baxter for a nice long walk first thing! We went out the board walk and around the park. He loves his walks, not just for the obvious reason - he enjoys being outside, walking, and mostly sniffing and marking just about everything. I enjoy my walks with Baxter too!

The first thing we look forward to in a marina is a full shower, but unfortunately, there are no showers at the Battery Park Marina, so Patty put the blanket up and used the Helio for her shower. Then we had "Sunday breakfast" on Saturday! Most mornings while cruising it is coffee and toast, but when we are at a marina with power, we like to have something a little more substantial. This morning is was corned beef hash and eggs.  Looks like we will have a few more days to have breakfast in the marina. I'm sure Patty will figure out something for variety, like pancakes, French toast, or Mexican hash, which is pork sausage, green chilies, diced potatoes scrambled with eggs doused with green sauce, one of our favorites!

After catching up on emails and posting the blog, we walked up to the Piggly Wiggly supermarket, which is a little over half a mile. We bought about as much as we could carry. We know we will make at least one more trip. Marc Grove had mentioned loaning us a golf cart, which would make it a bit easier to carry, say, a four liters of box wine and half a rack of beer! I got excited when I saw the Piggly Wiggly smokehouse out in the parking lot, but they told me it was shut down pending some improvements required by the Health Department. I would have loved to try some of their BBQ!

In the afternoon, we relaxed a bit, had our sundowners, and headed downtown for dinner. We chose a place on Water Street called Up the Creek Raw Bar based on the reviews, This is a different direction from the Piggly Wiggly, and took us right through downtown Apalachicola, which is a very compact and busy downtown. We look forward to walking around Monday and Tuesday, since there are a lot of shops, restaurants, and museums.  I want to check out the Apalachicola Maritime Museum for sure, and probably the Art and Culture Museum. On the way we passed the historic place of business of Wefings in Apalachicola (Wefings Marine is now in Eastpoint across the bridge).

Historic building formerly housing Wefings Marine Supplies, established 1909.
Wefings has deep roots in Apalachicola!

We walked along Water Street, where there were quite a few boats along the creek, including a couple of shrimp boats.

Shrimp boat tied up on Water Street along Scipio Creek

Up the Creek Raw Bar was right up Water Street from the shrimp boat. The restaurant is upstairs, and has inside dining or dining on a covered deck.

Up the Creek Raw Bar on Scipio Creek

We chose to sit on the covered deck. At Up the Creek, you order at a counter, and they bring you the food, you get your condiments at a little condiment bar, and if you want more, you go back to the counter and order some more! We started out with a dozen raw oysters with lemon juice and horse radish, which were great, but not enough! So I had a fried flounder basket and Patty had the crab and lobster bisque and a side of hush puppies. I also had a couple of IPAs from the local brewery a couple of blocks down the street, which was also very good!

While we were walking back, Barrett called to ask if it was good time to FaceTime, and by us, it is always a good time to FaceTime with Barrett and little Romy! So we sat on a bench in front of the Post Office downtown, and had a wonderful few minutes of FaceTime!  It was a good thing that I had brought our Verizon Jetpack in my pocket, since our T-Mobile phones (now singular, more on that in a second) have zero service here. We bought the Jetpack back in Savannah, and it has been a lifesaver, since for most of the way since Savannah the only service we have had is T-Mobile WiFi with our iPhones connected to the Jetpack!

Patty had taken the Anker PowerCore and a lightening cord to dinner, since the battery in her iPhone has been failing. Well, she won't have to put up with that battery any longer. While getting on board via the walk-around, somehow the iPhone got pulled out of her pocket with the lightening cord, the iPhone came off the cord, hit the walk-around, and went kerplop!  I watched it happening as if in slow motion, feeling powerless to do anything to save it! Now Patty's iPhone sleeps with the fishes, and we have to find some way to replace it! I texted Marc Grove, and he will see if he can find where we might be able to replace it, but we are thinking it will probably be one of the larger cities down the west coast of Florida. Marc's comment was spot on: "Her T-Mobile iPhone works as well at the bottom of the marina as it does any place else around here!" 

On the bright side, Marc and Anita invited us for brunch tomorrow, and we are really looking forward to that!