The Inter Coastal Waterway and Fort Walton

                                                                       

The Inter Coastal Waterway is very shallow with lots of sandbars.  The average marked channel is about 9-11 feet deep, outside that it may only be a couple of feet deep.  The dredged channel though many parts is pretty narrow.  Bill is constantly concerned about hitting a sandbar.  We actually had a close call and missed an unmarked sandbar by only 2 feet. Several looper boats we know ruined their props in this area hitting ground.
                                                       

                                                   

dolphin that followed us a long way (hard to see)

There are lots of dolphins around.  We had 3 dophins travel right along side our boat for awhile.

The white sand dunes are beautiful!

                                                        

Now entering Florida sign

 Fresh shrimp the last 4 out of 5 days (had to have a break in between). Heaven! I bought a pound of shrimp from a tiny shop at the beach -  they boiled it, seasoned it, and handed it to me on a bag of ice for $9. I had to go back and get more it was so great. 

                                                  

We tied up at the “free” city dock for the night in Fort Walton.  It was a new dock right downtown on a beautiful park.  But as Bill says, “free is not free”. That evening/night we had numerous strange people hanging out on the dock right near our boat.  The strangest of all was at 11:00  that night when an older man with a teenager spent a long time there about 15 feet from our boat,  then threw a bag of ashes in the water.  We were weirded out!  We immediately turned off the generator and didn’t flush the heads all night so as not to suck up any of the ashes up into the boat.