August 9-12, 2001

In August, Bruce Krebs (co-worker & friend of 25+ years) invited me to crew with him on a boat being moved from Ft. Walton Beach (Florida) to Houston. Bruce is a good friend of Hal Ponton, a professional boat captain who is often hired to move a boat from one part of the country to another. In this case, the owners of a SunSeeker 55 wanted to move their boat to a marina near Houston. Hal needed a couple of crew members to help, so he asked Bruce, who in turn asked me. And so our story begins....

The boat was in a marina in Ft Walton Beach. FWB is just a few miles west of Destin FL. Cap'n Hal & Bruce flew up early on a Thursday to prep the boat. I flew in later that night (thanks to an AirTran delay in Atlanta, it was much later that night, like 1:30 am). We were up at dawn Friday, ready to roll. After a two hour delay to fix a fresh-water pump (a premonition of what was to follow), we cast off.

All the boats lined up at the Ft Walton Beach Marina

looking back at the marina as we enter the channel

view through the patio door at the rear of the boat

the Cap'n

Our original plan was to cut across the Gulf on Friday to Venice LA. Venice is on the tip of Louisiana delta that sticks out in the gulf, below New Orleans. Day two, Saturday, we would go from Venice to Intracoastal City, on the LA coast near Texas. Sunday, our last day, we would ride home into the marina at Clear Lake City, just south of Houston. As I said, our original plan :-)

Not long after we left, Cap'n Hal could tell the boat (esp. the engines) probably hadn't been maintained the way it should have been, and he wasn't comfortable taking it out into the middle of the Gulf yet. So he decided to take the IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW) west along the coast. Fine with me! This was a part of the Gulf Coast I had never seen, and it was beautiful.

The first city we came to was Pensacola. Here we're getting ready to pass under the bridge that connects Pensacola to the barrier islands.

Pensacola Naval Air Station (NAS)

Military jet landing...

Incredible wildlife all along the ICW

There are hundreds of barrier islands all along the Gulf Coast. They form the outer (seaward) side of the ICW. They are mostly small and deserted, some just a few hundred yards long. Here you can see someone has pulled their skiff up to one for a day of fishing or leisure.

There are also parts of the ICW that are developed...

First mate Bruce fixing lunch

Hi tech console; all computerized, digital GPS tied into the autopilot, etc.

Cap'n Hal

As Friday came to a close, we pulled into a marina right on the Florida-Alabama border.