St. Joe's to St. Vincent's Island

Too bad it's not all saint's day...(my birthday and several other friends of mine birthday's) because it seems we're going to all the Saint places. In Panama City we stayed at St. Andrew's Marina. Then we anchored out at Saint Joseph Bay, then again at St. Vincent's Island. We did stay two days in St. Joe's, because of the weather. It was supposed to be better, but it took a turn for the worse. On the third day, we decided to sail. It was ok for awhile, but then the gulf waters started getting bigger and bigger, then the swells started becoming huge. Our weather sources just didn't seem to be giving us accurate information, which is frustrating when you are relying on them for travel. We got as far as St. Vincent's Island that night, and were trying to find two anchorages that were outside of the Island. One was a "new" island...whatever that means. Must be man-made, or something. It was called "Bird Island Lagoon", however it didn't show up on the map, the GPS, or active captain. The other anchorage was called "Wreck Island", which just wasn't calling our names. It was 6pm when we got close to the area, and we couldn't see a thing. It was literally pitch black out. No moon because of the cloud cover, winds blowing about 25 knots, no lights on the island, so apparently no habitation here. We just had no clue where we were...so we decided to anchor where the water was a good depth for us. We found a place with 7-10 feet around the area and dropped anchor. The sea was whipping all night, and our boat was rocking side to side so much, I almost fell of the bed a couple of times. Very tricky getting up in the middle of the night for our nightly bathroom call. :)  Needless to say, neither of us slept well all night. It sounded like things were falling off the boat, or breaking. So weird. When I woke up next morning, Paul was up. He told me to go up and see where we anchored. This is what I saw:

Well guess what! We anchored just about 50 yards from "Wreck Island". I'm so glad we didn't go in any closer, or it could've been "Wreck Island Squared". You can see part of the ship still above water here. and all around it were breakers. Not big ones, but little ones that kept us rocking all night long.
Oh, and, bye the way, the wind did blow off our master berth carpet, which had gotten wet in our Destin experience with the big breaker. We were trying to dry it out (futile attempt with all the wetness everywhere) so we could then use it as a template for a new rug. It's hard to get all the measurements correct what with all the strange curves on a boat. Oh well. Starting over. If nothing else, traveling via boat teaches one either patience, or perseverance! Sometimes both...sometimes, neither!

We've been in some pretty close calls on this trip. Lordy mercy! We'll have plenty of stories to tell, anyway. I think we're going to earn our pirate patches pretty soon!