Offshore and Overnight run

 We did it!! We completed our overnight, 29 hour run, 63 miles offshore, trek. We left Panama City yesterday at daybreak, it was a bumpy smooth, not perfectly smooth but not too bumpy of a ride. The further we went, the smoother it got.  We all had dinner, a sandwich and chips, at 4:30pm.  Captain Bernie went down for a nap to prepare for his watch which started at 7pm., at which time David and I headed for a nap and Captain Bernie started his lookout. At 11pm, David went up to the pilot house to take his turn on watch, I went up to help David about 1:45 am and we got into a geek-off,  discussing navigation and radar, time flew by.  David went down to sleep in the salon just in case a kraken showed up and tried to eat us, so I ran the boat by myself, in the pitch dark, just me and the radar and it was wonderful.  It makes you feel so empowered!  Captain Bernie came up exactly on time at 5am to relieve me.  I told him about all the wondrous things I had seen, turned the helm over to him and high-tailed it down to our stateroom and totally crashed.  With a gentle roll of the boat and being plumb exhausted, I slept the best I have in a long time. Our perfect seas lasted until we found a good place to anchor this afternoon.

Ellie going for a dinghy ride.

Painkiller at her 1st “swinging on the hook”


Sunset.


Going through a Cypress swamp



More Ellie pics.


Our first beach, Ellie finally has some fun.

Our 7.6 knot maximum speed boat going 9.8 knots!!


Pam at the helm.


Parasailing.


Ellie not so sure about my driving the boat.

Hurricane damage, maybe a repeat pic, oops

 Our first time anchoring went very well, we’d done it many times in the past but not yet on Painkiller.  I was at the helm, David dropped the anchor, we learned a few anchoring hacks to insure us a peaceful and much needed restful sleep tonight.  We lowered our dinghy into the water, got our life jackets on, started the motor (yay, it’s always a good day in Boatland when the dinghy runs right). Ellie was sporting her new life vest and off we went to a small white sand beach where Ellie made 2new friends, 2 goldens that had brought a ball to play with, oh what doggie fun she had.  She hasn’t been in the water before, except the groomers bathtub,  and learned that the ocean was a pretty cool place to play. There was no swimming involved but a lot of hippity hopping going on.  Hopefully the video will up load.  We have just about finished our day, Captain Bernie is looking for a rental car to head home on Wednesday morning.  We will do a couple of anchoring drills tomorrow and then I think we will have graduated from Boat School.  Boy have we learned a lot!! 

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