Ann & John toast Jascat's arrival at Pensacola, the final destination of this cruise

The non party animals awoke with the sun this morning, while the rowdies slept in. Most of the power boats had gone, but there were a lot of little day sailboats still anchored around us at what the guide books call “Quiet Water Beach”. [John calls it Fishing Bend because that's what it says on the chart.] The water may have been quiet but nothing else was. One of the bars played loud music till at least midnight. (We've had worse, in Hopetown.) We both wore earplugs to bed and slept pretty well. Not to sound too grumpy; it was fun to see where the party was, and I look forward to going back and going ashore to the beach, shops and restaurants. I'll go during the week, not the weekend.

As we were getting ready to leave, we saw an Atlantic Manta make a quick surface swim of about 50 feet. It was chasing something or being chased. Its wings were sticking up out of the water, and part of the time its barb was also.

Then, as we got underway we smelled smoke. This time it was a fire in Alabama. You want to hold your breath, or take shallow breaths, but that doesn't work for hours at a time. It has been stunning the number of places that have had fires as we traveled through them: Houma, LA (a historic church burned the day before we got there); Marsh Harbour (multiple brush fires), Big Cypress in the Everglades which we smelled while off shore and again when in Ft Myers (brush fire); Bradenton, FL and Clearwater, FL (that fire was near Tampa); Destin, FL (fire source unknown), and finally the Alabama brush fire we smelled in Pensacola. I apologize to any fire I left out. Now that is enough, let's have some rain.

Back to sailing: The winds were light today so we motored for two hours in to Pensacola. We are currently tied to the dock in Bayou Chico. We are awaiting assignment to a more permanent slip, which will have better tie up for hurricane season. We are also awaiting the AC repairman; he was ready to come this morning, but we didn't yet have dockside power. We do now, so tomorrow we hope to see him and turn on the AC. It is very hot and muggy. We were cheering the threat of another thunderstorm in hopes of cooling, but it passed us by.

The rest of the week will be spent cleaning up, fixing the AC, packing whatever goes home this first trip, and fixing a few little things. There will also be a trip to Starbucks, West Marine, and Barnes and Noble.