How far do we have to go to get warm in December?
It was a sunny 78 degrees when we pulled Ginger Lee into Fairhope, Alabama. I really thought I had my answer. We were all tee shirts and shorts, bare feet and umbrella drinks on the aft deck. Yee ha! The deep south! The next day the temperature never made it out of the forties. The next night was twenty-two degrees. Then there was a storm. The day after that it snowed. We were there for six days and never turned off the heater.

Fairhope Municipal Marina on a beautiful but frigid morning. The temperature was below freezing. Colder than our hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts.

Totally unprepared for a quarter-inch of snow, the city of Fairhope closed down due to weather. I’m serious.

Downtown Fairhope scene.

More.

Apparently, Fairhope was not far enough. We moved on.

Flora-Bama Lounge and Package.

The only guest at Flora-Bama. They let us stay for free.

Flora-Bama was nice and sorta warm. Not shorts weather, but I was able to stick my bare feet into Gulf Coast sand for the first time.

Gulf of Mexico sand.

Inside the Flora-Bama Oyster Bar. One end of the bar is in Perdido Key, Florida, the other end is in Orange Beach, Alabama. Hence Flora-Bama.

They invited us to sign the bar. I misspelled my home state!

It was the same story in Pensacola, Florida. The days were gorgeous, the people friendly, the raw oysters awesome (so I hear), and to top it all off, they sold beer and cigars right at the end of the dock. Still, we couldn’t open the windows, and we needed to use our heater at night. It was excellent long-sleeve shirt weather, but not warm.

Pensacola beach scene. Wonderful place. The XO used to live here. I love this place!

A Pensacola beach bar. There are tons of them.

Pensacola sunrise.

The only guest in Fort Walton Beach. Free dock with water and pump-out. No electric. Pretty good place near a supermarket. The XO enjoyed a yoga class. Still not so warm. Moving on.

Moving on through the Intracoastal Waterway.

This man-made part of the Intracoastal is called The Ditch.

It wasn’t until we docked in Panama City that we could finally open windows and hang out in shorts. No heater was needed at night. It was great. Then the fog rolled in.

Fogged in at the Saint Andrews Marina in Panama City, Florida. A wicked pea soupah.

A warm, sunny morning. I’m glad we stayed.

Raw oysters and beer.

World champion shucker Honor Allen shows off his custom-made shucking knife.

Believe me, there are worse places to be stuck in port. We met some very nice people and really enjoyed the special ambiance that only a historic working port can provide.

Ginger Lee and working boats.

The XO test drives a fancy water toy by Hobie. Afterwards she proclaimed “I gotta get one.” After hearing the $2,000 price she amended her proclamation to “I gotta get one someday.“

Fellow looper Tom gets his unique boat rPAD ready for departure.

Another look at rPAD. She has a custom-made pilothouse, twin hulls, and twin 50 horsepower outboards.

How far do we have to go to get warm in December? As far as beautiful Panama City, Florida. SOCOBO 12/22/17

Dusk at Saint Andrews Marina, Panama City, Florida.

“How is your trip going?” The XO asks. She is, of course, referring to the Great Loop. It’s not the first time she has asked this question.
“It’s your trip too,” I answer this time, knowing full well that it is my dream trip. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without her. So that sort of makes it her trip too.
“Yeah, I know. But I wanna know about your part.”
“It’s great! Beats workin’.”
“Is it like you expected?”
“Hell no. Nothing about this trip is anything like I expected.”
“Like what?”
“Well for one thing, I thought we would have trouble finding places to stay, but that has never been the case. In fact, everywhere we go, we are usually alone, marina or anchorage.”

Alone in a marina.

“Maybe people are avoiding us,” the XO kids.
“Ha! It is odd though. We don’t usually run into the people we meet more than a few times. Maybe our pace is different,” I reason.
“Or our taste in ports is.”
“That’s true. We tend to avoid the popular places. Prefer a good working boatyard over a glitzy destination marina. There’s nothing better than a deserted out-of-the-way anchorage.”

Deserted anchorage.

“It’s the Great Loop. We can only go so far off the beaten path, but you’re right, we have different tastes than most boaters. What else is not expected?”
“I didn’t think it would be so cold. I though we would be fighting the heat. We’ve only air-conditioned twice and we’ve heated hundreds of times. I’m totally unprepared clothing-wise. I only brought one thermal shirt; I still have no gloves; I had to buy a wool hat and a fleece jacket, and keeping enough heating fuel on the boat is a problem.”

Heating fuel loaded onto my Lil Mule.

“The warmest day we’ve had so far had been way north, like somewhere in Michigan, and the coldest day was in the deep south near the Gulf of Mexico in Fairhope, Alabama. It actually snowed for the first time in decades!”

Snow in the deep south.

“What about you. What surprises you about this trip.” I ask.
“Besides the fact that fresh vegetables don’t last more than a day, I thought it would be more relaxing. Some of it is kinda frightening,” she answered.
“We do Summer trips on Ginger Lee all the time. It’s not so scary. Well, not all the time,” I countered.  Boating is, and always will be, somewhat dangerous. Stuff can and will happen, no matter how well you prepare.
“Ya but living on the boat has taken it to another level, but so far, most of the water stays out of the boat; I’m starting to relax a bit. In fact, by the time we get back home I’m gonna be so relaxed you’ll have to pour me into my job!” SOCOBO 12/16/17

Relaxing walk on a Gulf of Mexico beach.

No one knows where they came from. There was no hailing port on their 48 foot ketch “Mystic Sun”. Even the boat itself was mystery. It must have arrived Sunday night while we slept. Kudos to the crew for navigating in such a wicked fog, and for docking without waking my wife, a light sleeper with a keen sense of hearing. In the morning we awoke and they were there in front of us.
The Mystic Sun has precious little free space on the above decks. It’s packed with all kinds of stuff. From our vantage point behind them, I saw dozens of items. Some that belong on a boat, some that might belong on a boat, and some that have no business being on a boat at all.

Aft deck.

Fore deck.

I can only imagine what it’s like inside. I sipped coffee and wondered about that and about Mystic Sun’s sailors. I didn’t have to wonder very long. Through the diffused morning sunlight, partially obscured by the rustic wooden pilings of the old dock, I watched as three of them appeared in the haze.  Females. Fairly young. Like feral cats they preened and stretched in the warm sunlight. One spotted me and disappeared like smoke. Then the other two disappeared as well.  I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Did I just see that? Naw. I need more coffee. That’s all. Yes. At that time I believed there were only three, although I could’ve been mistaken, given the nature of all true ferals, who shun the light and skulk in the corners of existence, not so much out of fear, but more for survival in a fearsome world.
I ducked low on my seat so as not to be seen. One of them soon appeared on deck. She had white blonde hair, cropped close except for the bangs, which swiped below yellowish brown eyebrows, like the young actress in Kevin Costner’s movie “Waterworld”. She quickly peeled a small orange citrus fruit, possibly a tangerine, fed on it, and tossed the rinds into the fast-moving river. They floated by me down river in the quick current. Fascinated, I went outside onto the dock for closer observation, and maybe to say hi, but was startled by the fact that suddenly there was no longer anybody on the deck, and there’s unintelligible sounds emanating from the inside the old sailboat. It’s like a chant that repeats over and over. I couldn’t make out any specific language.
“What’s that noise”? the XO asked from inside our boat.
“It’s them”, I whispered. “The feral girls”, my body blocking my pointing finger.
“Feral girls”?
“Yes. Girls. Living in the wilds of the waterways. Look”.
Suddenly, another feral emerged from the companionway. Taller than the first, with short dark hair, dark eyes, shorts and navy blue tee-shirt. A quick hop and she was off the boat, bare feet padding down the dock. Just before she reached the turn, she faded away like heat waves coming off a hot black-top road. Or did she simply turn the corner out of sight? I couldn’t be sure.

A rare sighting of a feral girl.

As I refilled my coffee cup, another climbed the stairs into the daylight. She’s older, possibly 15, with dirty blonde pony-tailed hair, faded skinny jeans, and off white Keds. She sat aft on the ornate wooden railing. After peering into a white cell phone for a solid 10 minutes, she grabbed three tangerines and expertly juggled them to the delight of her younger feral sis, who was climbing up the companionway stairs.
At first I thought there were only three, but as I sat sipping java, a confirmed sighting of a fourth occurred. This one had long dark hair and wore a long dark overcoat. She possessed the air of an established older teenager. By her interaction with the other ferals, and the way they followed her movements, I deduced that she was the pack leader. With one swift, agile movement, she leapt off the boat and onto the dock. I heard no sound when her feet hit the old wood, and like her pack-mate, she walked down the dock and faded away in a haze a microsecond before the turn. I know I saw that.

Another sighting.

“You’re letting your imagination run wild again”, the XO said.
“If you look at them too long they disappear. Like smoke”.
“What? They’re just living on their boat, like tons of people”.
“I know what I saw”, I said.
The XO didn’t look skeptical; in fact, she laughed. We often make up stories about people we see and don’t know anything about. It’s simply a fun way to pass the time, but I wonder. Where did they come from? Where are they going? How are they surviving?
Later that day, shortly after sunset, when the moon began its slow glowing rise, we heard the strangest sounds. The same rhythmic chanting over and over that increased in volume, louder and louder. It was impossible to ignore. Suddenly there was absolute silence, equally impossible to ignore. When we heard a large watery sound like that of a person falling off a boat, we jumped up to investigate. But there was nothing there, no splashing, no wake, and no Mystic Sun. There was no evidence of anything, just the dim moonlight reflecting off the grey brackish waters of the Dog River. SOCOBO 12/9/17