Fly Creek!

Our time at Eastern Shores Marina in Fly Creek has been very relaxing. This is a “working marina”.

Their shop does a lot of maintenance, bottom jobs, and entire paint jobs. There is a small fleet of shrimp boats which moor at the bottom of the Creek, next to the marina.

We often times hear one motoring out in the middle of the night. Have been trying to catch one coming in from their catch to see if we can buy some fresh shrimp.  

Just across the bay in the marina, is the eclectic Fly Creek Cafe. We can almost throw a stone over to it from our boat, but to walk there is over a mile. However, 20CENT$ gets us there in an instant.  Needless to say, we have become “regulars”.

They have an outside seating area with fire pits, tables, funky chairs, and a bar. Sunday night, 18 “Loopy” people went over for dinner. Those of us with dinghys acted as shuttles.

One thing we have really enjoyed is meeting people from all over the USA, Canada, Sweden, basically the World, who are doing this trip. We find all to be very interesting to talk to, and everyone is always willing to lend a hand with advice, mechanical skills, a spare part, or whatever one needs. It constantly amazes me how friendly and willing to lend a hand all are. 

However, some times we think we’ve lost touch with home. We didn’t realize that our friends Scott & Bobbie had gone into business in Alabama!!!

We saw their store on the way to Home Depot in the SuckZucki courtesy car.

Now you ask - Home Depot??? What could they possibly have there for a boat??? Well - the Admiral just could not stand it to see me without tools in my hands. Besides that, she was complaining about having to balance the bread on top of the toaster and coffee container, and have it fall out of the cupboard every time she opened the door. So - we figured a piece of pre-finished shelving, and a couple of brackets from Home Depot would solve the problem. 

We found a piece that would match the other shelving, but, of course it had to be cut. Darn - I forgot to pack my table saw. No problem I thought. Home Depots always have a large cross cut yard saw I was certain I could use. No luck. The young floor clerk told me that he would have to cut it. Liability you know. I told him to just cross cut it to 18 5/8”, then rip it to  9 3/4”.

After he fiddled around for five minutes with the saw, trying to adjust it, he asked me: “That was 18 and how many of the little marks??” Oh well - we got it cut.  And the Admiral is happy. No more bread on the floor!!!

After a hard day of carpentry work, we took a little cruise up Fly Creek in the dinghy. Below are some pictures of the trip. 

As hard as he tried the "attack dog" just couldn’t keep up with 20CENT$

We see the Soggy Bottom head out every morning to do a little fishing in the Bay.  Yes - that’s an electric trolling motor, and an updated, high quality plastic lawn chair helm seat!

We’ve been plotting a few alternatives for the Gulf crossing, which is looming ever closer. We’ve pretty well decided to not do the long overnight, but to do two daylight runs -  from Carabelle to Steinhatche - then to Crystal River. The downside of this is we may get stuck for a while in Steinhatche waiting for another weather window to make Crystal River, but we don’t care if we have to sit for a while.

Another alternative, if the Gulf is flat, is to do Carabelle to Crystal River in one shot.  Our only commitment at this point is to be in Sarasota by January 1st.

The AGLCA Harbor Hosts for this area are stopping by the Marina on Wed. evening to give their advice on the crossing, and answer any questions from the Loopers they can about the area. The Harbor Host program has been a real benefit of belonging to the AGLCA. There is always someone to call who has “local knowledge”.

It’s been drizzly for the past few days, and the sun finally came out. Time for a little walk on the beach.

Catch y’all later!

Captn Ken