Monday funday--fuel, dolphins, and OPLATs

Today's excitement started during Frank's balls-to-04 watch (that's for all our SWO buddies!).  At about 0100 he woke me and called me onto deck (in my skivvies!) so he could investigate intermittent slowing of the engine.  Thankfully it was quickly resolved by switching fuel filters, made especially easy with our Racor dual filter system.  It always happens at night!

0400-0800 watch was awesome again!  Look at that sunrise!  We were offshore between Destin and Pensacola by this point.

Katreina joined me around 0700, just in time for a ton of dolphins to join us!

Just before noon we entered the ICW in Pensacola and began an afternoon on the water with Memorial Day boaters.  They were really quite good with ROR!  

This ICW is really nice--wide and deep!  We had some pretty big thunderstorms in the area, but they kept to the north of us so we pressed on.  After we crossed into Alabama the traffic got more commercial and we saw our first oil platforms.

We pushed on to an anchorage at the west end of Dauphin Island for the night. It was the first time we'd stopped the engines in 56hrs.  Yes, I know it's a sailboat.  But <5kts or 10kts on the nose aren't going to get us where we need to be.  Anchorage was great!  We enjoyed a few beers, I took a quick skinny dip in the insanely warm water, and we took showers up on deck.  And with the breeze it cooled off enough for a good night of sleep.  I've missed all of this so much.