Orange Beach, Alabama - Destin Florida
Good Mornin' ya'll! Another beautiful day at sea...
As we were trucking along
we came across a few fishing boats so we dropped our speed and dropped in our
lines to troll. Jayden and Joie were
holding the lines for awhile but they didn’t get any bites. I took over Joie’s
line. We still weren’t getting anything
and were well past the fisherman so we started reeling in our lines. As I was reeling mine in I could swear I was
getting some bites but I couldn’t really tell.
I kept reeling it in. As the end
of the line got closer I could see my tackle, but I thought it looked a little
different. Jacob was on the fly deck
looking down so I asked him if it looked like I had a fish. He didn’t think so. It wasn’t until I reeled it all the way in
that we realized I caught a fish! First
fish of the trip! He flipped and flopped
around freeing himself from the hook and dropped inside the back of the
boat. At that very same moment Joie
slipped coming down from the fly deck and flopped on the deck too! Luckily, she didn’t get hurt.
The kids and I were thrilled
about catching the fish until we could see that it was dying. Then we felt bad for killing it. We planned to cook it so it surely wasn’t
dying in vain. We didn’t even know what
kind of fish it was until Joie searched the internet to find it was a Spanish Mackerel;
tastiest one in the mackerel family. Lucky
us! We chopped off his head, wrapped him
up, and put him over ice to eat later.
Today felt like the
longest day ever! Though it was a pretty
short trip it seemed like we were never going to make it to Destin. We didn’t run the generator today because it
more than doubled our gas consumption.
At one point we got so hot that we all needed to cool down. I would have loved to jump into the water but
there were so many jellyfish. We even
saw two manta war. No thank you! I think I’ll stay inside the boat.
We sat on the bow of the
boat with our legs dangling letting the waves splash and pound on our legs. It was refreshing and felt like a massage on
my calves, a perfectly safe way to cool down.
Jacob even got to do it while he let Jayden captain Dream Catcher on
autopilot. After that Joie and I hung
out on the fly deck where the breeze was stronger and cooler.
We were really excited to
get to Destin. When we drove through it
on our way to drop off our truck to be shipped to St. Thomas we saw how crystal
blue the water was, just like the Caribbean.
We specifically chose to come back to Destin so we could hang out at
Crab Island. It’s a sand bar with a floating
restaurant, bar, and water slides.
Boaters anchor up and gather around to hangout. It looked like a bunch of fun.
It was sunny and beautiful
all day, but as we finally reached Destin the clouds were rolling in. We pulled straight into Crab Island. It didn’t look as pretty as it did when we
drove through because the sun wasn’t out, but we anchored up anyway hoping to
hop in with everyone else. Just as we
were about to jump in the water it started to pouring. We’ve had so many awesome blessing lately how
could we complain. We pulled up the
anchor and headed to Harbor Walk Marina.
We agreed we would go back to Crab Island tomorrow considering that was
the biggest reason we stopped in Destin.
We pulled into the dock with our swimsuits on in the pouring rain. It seemed like everyone was seeking shelter
at the same time in a narrow channel.
Two pontoon boats actually ran aground while we were getting drenched
tying up our boat in yet another wood piling marina, lol. We are getting much better at tying up, but it
still makes me nervous. Somehow we were
blessed with a free night stay, saving us $160.
This is the most expensive marina we’ve stayed at.
We opted for dinner on the the Harbor Walk
since there were many choices available.
We ate dinner at Harry T’s since they were dog friendly. That was the only good thing, none of us were
impressed with the over-priced food.
After that we headed back to the boat to watch Jerry Seinfeld on Netflix
before going to sleep
