Carrabelle to Gulf Crossing back to Carrabelle...

January 2, 2023

We travelled to Charlotte, NC the day after Christmas to babysit and returned to Carrabelle.  A nice man shuttled us to and from the Tallahassee airport.  Following our return, there did not appear to be any open windows to do the crossing.  While I was more interested in doing the Big Bend route, Danny wanted to do the crossing and I was fine with that decision, he is the Captain!  On our arrival back to Carrabelle from babysitting, it was time to look at the weather forecast to determine when we could cross the Gulf to get to Tarpon Springs or Clearwater.  There is a guy who has done the Great Loop and continues to do the Loop that was a military pilot.  He is know as Eddie and has a service called Eddie's Weather Wag.  He looks at 3-5 different weather sites and gives guidance on the best opportunity to make a smooth crossing without the drama as he often says of the Gulf Coast from Florida Panhandle to the west coast of Florida.  He reviews the winds (looks for winds less than 13 knots), wave height (less than 2 feet), and weather forecast is the same 12 hours before and after your crossing in case the weather would change.  With the crossing of the gulf, there is no place to go to hide or get out of bad weather and takes 17-18 hours.

The reports looked like Monday afternoon/evening into Tuesday might work.  Danny made the decision around noon on Monday, we would leave around 2pm.  Eddie said we would be "threading the needle" as the winds would pick up around 3am.  There was a fog advisory to 20 miles off shore until 9pm but we would be through the fog within 2 hours and we had radar.  Kim the Harbormaster said it was doable.  I will say more about that later.

We left at 1:30pm heading out with light fog and decent visibility.  About 15 miles out into the Gulf, the fog got thicker, decreased visibility, and then the radar stopped working.  I was scared and Danny looked at me and said what do you want to do.  Easy answer, I wanted to turn around.  Within 10 minutes with no luck with the radar operating, we turned around to return to Carrabelle.  On our return, the fog had gotten worse and at 5:18pm, the fog forecast had worsened.  Finally, at 5:34pm, we got back to the marina.  The hassle of having front lines to tie on the boat which is a pain had to be done again but that's okay.  Above you can see our track out and our return followed by the R2 buoy which is the marker for the "start" of the Gulf Crossing!  While you may not appreciate the fog this was on the way out.  I was not about to get out of my seat on the way back for pictures as I was to focused for looking for boats, crab pots, and debris in the water.

  When we got back to the marina, a boat with the noted name was unloading significant red snapper they had caught while out for 3 days.  They were obviously smart enough to return before we figured it out.  This made me think- okay out for 3 days, a truck we saw receiving the fish- say 1 day, distributed to markets and restaurants- ?maybe 2-3 days so by the time you eat it or purchase it, it maybe 6-7 days since caught.  Obviously, everything was on ice that we could see but my question would be what is the definition of FRESH......Prior to leave for the Gulf Crossing, one of the commercial boats that had been out since Saturday was coming in Monday afternoon to offload their catch of grouper and snapper.  Beautiful fish!

Florida Black Bears...

So I could get back to my plans for seeing the rest of Carrabelle since the weather would not cooperate.  In addition to the WWII Museum and the Lighthouse, I really wanted to see a Florida Black Bear.  The guys that hang out at the marina who were are a hoot kept telling these great stories about the bears.  All 4 of them would not drive me around looking for one.  They said I just needed to walk around town when it was dark and I would find one.  Without a car, there was no way I was going to look for bears.  But I will tell you their best stories.  Apparently, if the Black bear is caught in town, Florida Wildlife Conservation (FWC) tranquilizes the bear and takes it to the Apalachicola Forest up the road.  The bears get 3 strikes, so if they return to town twice more, they are put to sleep.  Recently, the fine for shooting a bear has been dropped to a 3rd degree misdemeanor and 500 dollar fine which they all said was worth getting rid of the destruction that the bears caused because now there was no jail time.  One of them said one of the ranger told them, they would take a bear up to the forest and the bear would beat them back to town.   Some of the funny stories... one of the guy's was in a fast food eatery changing lights close to closing time and threw away his trash outside in the back, when he dumped it in the dumpster,  a bear popped up and just looked at him and went back down into the dumpster.  Another one was talking about being on his porch with some guys on the street drinking a few beers, the night before trash collection.  He swore he saw a bear come up to the trash can and grab it and roll it down the road behind him just like one of us would do.  This same guy said he asked his neighbors are you seeing what I'm seeing as he knew he had not drank that much beer.  Then one last one, one of the guy's son had a raised trailer on a lot that he had put a refrigerator under the unit, fully chained.  The guy said, I told my son before you leave town you better move that because those bears will tear that apart.  He comes back and they had peeled 2 opposite corners and broke the chains.  The interesting part was the bear(s) didn't take any of the meat but took all the oreo cookies, cupcakes, and sodas.  These 2 pictures are from the grocery store across the street and 2 bears in the backyard of Kim. the Harbormaster's next door neighbor.

World War II Museum...

The extra time allowed me to do some long walking to Camp Gordon Johnson which is a World War II Museum.  This was the  2nd largest US army training facility in Florida from 1942-6 where 250,000 men and woman trained on the beaches.  The site was selected because of the 20 miles of uninterrupted beach and jungle like area just inland.  Training could be achieved for both Europe and the Pacific areas in amphibious, diving, and paratrooping exercises.  There was also a POW camp at this base and below, it mentions a German man who was a baker and stayed in the US following the end of the war.
I walked 2 miles on US Route 98 to Camp Gordon Johnston Museum.  Camp Gordon Johnston was named after Colonel Johnston who served in multiple wars and was highly decorated.  The camp opened in 1942 by the Army to train soldiers in amphibious activities in both Europe and the Pacific.  The conditions of the area with a combination of sandy beaches, swamp areas, forest, and jungle like conditions made for good training conditions in any type on environment.  In late 1943, Carrabelle Beach and Dog Island, one of the out island were used by the US Army 4th Infantry Division to train soldiers for the Normandy Invasion on D-Day.  The area was called The Amphibious Training Center and was the last stop before the trip to England.  This group of soldiers were the first group to hit Utah Beach on June 6, 1944.  After the war was over, the Camp was used for training Special Forces and ultimately closed in June of 1946 turning over this type training to the US Navy.  According to their statistics, the Camp trained 250,000 troops from 1942 to 1946.  Soldiers nicknamed the Camp- "Hell by the Sea" and "Alcatraz of the Army."  The housing areas were set up quickly with wood and tar paper and were poor condition with no indoor sanitation not to mention mosquitos, bugs, snakes, feral hogs, and bears.  General Omar Bradley trained here during the D-day exercises and said who ever made the decision to have the Camp here should be court marshaled for stupidity.  A special amphibious vehicle was produced by GM called the DUKW.  The letters stood for D-1942, U- utility, K- all wheel drive, and W- powered wheel axle.  While it had great importance, it was of limited use because it was used in shallower water to unload and work across beaches.  A pump was used to keep it afloat and could reach 50 MPH, cruise at 5.5 knots for 50 nautical miles in water.  In these pictures, you can see the beach and the offloading of the soldiers.

The artifacts included items from the day to day life of the soldiers, medical clinic items, lots of pictures as none of the facilities were preserved.  This special board speaking to the diving program was also interesting.

Camp Johnson also housed German and Italian POWs starting March 1944 with a group of German U-boat crewmen.  About 2500 men were held here doing standard jobs throughout the area to include working in the kitchen, peanut fields, timber and pulpwood operations, warehouses, basic maintenance tasks, and even preparing railroad track beds. When the war was over, the commander at the camp was very concerned about rioting by those held captive and declared a state of emergency.  It was not needed.  Those held remained there until mid-1946 at the latest when the POW camp was closed.  If repatriation to Germany and Italy had not occurred by then, the POWs were transferred to other US bases.

 I found this item interesting due to the mention of Ft Eustis, at one time 5 miles away from by road and across the river from our home in Newport News.

The museum had a special display of the Nuremberg trials which I found very fascinating.  While the history of the trials can easily be found on numerous resources, there was a display of the individuals involved in the trial.  There were 3 Americans who I think are important individuals.  They include the following:

• Richard Sonnenfeldt- Born in Germany to Jewish parents, the family moved him to a boarding school in England, after Germany's attack in England was listed as an enemy alien and sent to Australia.  He emigrated to India and got to the US to join his family in Baltimore.  Once in the US, he served in the US Army and saw the Dachau concentration camp briefly once liberated.  Since Sonnenfeldt knew and spoke German and English fluently, he was named the chief interpreter for the US prosecution team.  After the war, he went to John Hopkins to study electrical engineering.  The biography mentions he was on the team at RCA to invent color TV, worked with NASA on the moon landing, and was a Dean of a Business school in Brooklyn, and sailed across the Atlantic 3 times in his sailboat in his 70's.  Sounds like quite a man to me!

• Thomas J Dodd- American attorney and diplomat assisted Supreme Court Justice, Robert H. Jackson in the prosecution for the US.  Agreeing to be involved in the prosecution, he thought he would be there several months, it was 15 months.  He cross examined a number of the German officers and made extensive use of film of items connecting these officers to the atrocities in the Concentration Camps.  Dodd's prosecution was thought to be one of the best presentations at the Nuremberg Trials.  To me with the documentation and pictures, I could certainly see why!  Some of you may remember his son, Christopher Dodd who represented Connecticut in the Senate and later was named ambassador to Uruguay and Costa Rica.

• Francis Biddle- Attorney General of the US 1941-1945, served as the primary American Judge at the Nuremberg Trials.  He was the only administration official in Roosevelt's administration to oppose the internment of Japanese citizens in camps.  Even after the camps were started, he again asked Roosevelt to end the practice to which Roosevelt refused.  When Roosevelt died, Truman asked him to resign as Attorney General.  As the Nuremberg Trials were being formed, Truman named Biddle to be the American judge.

 Special bottle of red wine to celebrate D-Day!

At the museum, the TOP Secret documents for the Normandy Invasion.  If you look at the list in the Table of Contents, it is VERY inclusive of anything I could ever think about in the planning.

Lighthouse...

Next stop was to see the Crooked River Lighthouse about a quarter mile down the road from the museum.

Dog Island, an out island from Carrabelle, had many lighthouses over the 1800's ultimately destroyed by hurricanes.  Congress in appropriating the money for another lighthouse recommended that moving it to the mainland would hopefully make it stand longer and it did!  It was lit into operation in October 1895 and decommissioned short of its 100th birthday.  It began using light bulbs in 1933 and became unmanned in 1952.  In the course of time, the US government determined it was no longer needed and decommissioned in 1995.  Following the decommissioning like many other lighthouses throughout the US, bids were put out for purchase.  A group here in Carrabelle obtained the bid to maintain the lighthouse as a museum.  The 2 keeper's house at one time on either side had been purchased and moved back in the 1960's.  Recently, through fund raising efforts, the original Fresnal lenses made in Paris, France in 1894 for the lighthouse came back to Carrabelle and is in the museum.  Because I went on Tuesday and they were not open, I only got to look inside the museum and read the boards by the lighthouse, no walking up the lighthouse.  Next time........

We say goodbye to our friends in Carrabelle and the resident cat, Smokey until next time!

TOTAL MILES TRAVELLED   854.3 miles
TOTAL DAYS 52