Aquaholic: 6/12 Lazy Days When the Skies Are Gray

I know that no one will believe this but, Erik awoke early and sat on the aft deck drinking his coffee and smoking his smokes. It was again a rainy morning with the wind blowing. The weather dissuaded most of the local fishermen from venturing out for day three of red snapper season. However, there were a couple of die hard crews who were at the docks early filling their tanks with fuel and live wells with ice to keep the days catch fresh.
We took advantage of the not so nice weather and stayed aboard Aquaholic for the morning and a good part of the afternoon, Renee working on her mathematics class work and Erik catching up on some email and work related things. Mid afternoon we were both tired of sitting and decided to walk down into town. As stated earlier, Carabelle is a MUCH smaller, quiet fishing town. There are a handful of shops and restaurants along with a couple of pretty cool museums. We caroused around in one of the museums which highlighted the history of hurricanes in the forgotten coast. It also had a large array of maps spanning hundreds of years. From there we went into the 'History of Carabelle Museum' where a very friendly woman greeted us and told us some of her favorite stories. The people here, as with all of the places we have stopped thus far, are friendly and eager to share about their town.

Welcome to Carabelle

Just like the people in the river towns that we have traversed the past couple of years, these communities in the Panhandle of Fla are also very proud and like to recognize the Servicemen and Servicewomen who have defended our country

Carabelle has been known (and is in Ripley's Believe it or Not and The Guinness Book of World Records as being the town with the smallest police station in the world

This replica of the phone booth sized police center is located near the town center

The original police station is now located in the History of Carabelle Museum

Picture came out kind of dark but this oil painting of the cities history was pretty impressive and told some stories

On our way into town to explore we had stopped at the Post Office where a package with several items Renee had ordered from Amazon a couple of days ago were delivered and waiting for us. The pics below include the improvements that we received.

A new flag pole/mast now displays our 'Marinette' pendant flag on the flybridge

A cell phone holder now graces the helm on the flybridge. We have found it challenging at times to hold a device displaying navigation charts while on bouncy seas

Bouncy seas have also claimed our coffee and drinks on a couple of occasions. The drink holders we had were inadequate and also often had our cold drinks perched in the hot sunlight. These new ones are mounted lower where there is typically shade and also have holders we can snug to multiple sizes of drink containers

And...MOST IMPORTANTLY a new coffee thermos! This time one without the glass lining

After our walk downtown we came back to the boat and partook in nap time. All of this stress and hard work really can take it out of us 😉

Rested up we decided to venture out on another walk the other direction to see what else the area had. We walked down the street and through a couple other local marinas. Just down the river we went over a walk bridge that connected to a large set of docks owned by The Moorings Marina that had been damaged badly by Hurricane Micheal. There are A LOT of docks throughout the area still that are in disrepair. Marina owners tell us that the workers that put the new pilings in and repair the docks are in very high demand and there are not very many of them.