ICW from Apalachicola to Panama City

We had planned on stopping at Apalachicola for a couple of days after leaving Dog Island but then when I looked at the weather forecast we changed our mind. They were predicting the remnants of Patrica to hit Panama City starting tonight so we opted to only stop in Apalachicola long enough to go to the Piggly Wiggly and get some grub. We then continued on with the plan to anchor in Lake Wimica in an area charted at 6' deep so we could get an early start to PC. When we got to that area we eased out of the channel it quickly dropped to 5' and we were at high tide. Scratch that idea. Well what to do now. I usually have a backup plan, but this time I did not as the area marked 6' was a large area and I did not anticipate there being any problems. We did not want to run at night because of floating debris, we saw a wide spot just off the channel north of the lake and decided to anchor there for the night. I set the bow anchor and then set a stern anchor to keep us from swinging into the channel. All went well till 1:30 in the morning. The wind picked up and the bow anchor drug. We tried to reset it but could not get it to set. I pulled up the stern anchor (a Fortress FX37) and moved it to the bow. It set right away. It was very muddy in this area and the Fortress is an excellent mud anchor. We kept an anchor watch the rest of the night but did not move at all.

We were underway at first light to make it to PC as quickly as we could. Originally the strong winds were not supposed to be here until tonight thus our plan for bypassing Apalachicola and pressing on to be here by noon, unfortunately they arrived much earlier than predicted. When we left this morning I set the rpms at 1700 to make some time. We were able to run at about 7 3/4 knots the whole way. We got to our anchorage about 11:15. This time I had picked out 3 possible anchorages just in case. We got to the first one and decided it would do. 7.5' of water and land nearby to keep the sea state reasonable. There are not many trees ashore here so we are still getting some wind but not waves. The other two anchorages were further away and may have been better but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Plus it was starting to rain. They are predicting up to 2" of rain today so we opted for this anchorage. We set the anchor and let out 85' of chain. So far we have not moved at all.
It has been really windy. Predictions for today are 25 to 30 with gusts to 40. We are just happy to be in a large enough anchorage to be able to let out as much chain as we want. Tomorrow is supposed to be about like today and maybe a little worse. No plans to pull the anchor until Wednesday or Thursday.

Nice to see trees other than palm tees again, but I Know it won't be long till I miss them.

This part of the ICW is wide and beautiful.

This is why we did not want to travel at night.

I like it.

These are some floating houses in a little offshoot near where we anchored. I assume fishing camps.

Walkabout at anchor Dog Island.