Day break at Apalachicola Marina with Spike’s tidy little 25 ft yacht in the foreground. Last night Spike told us about his dream of exploring the the South American Rivers. Initially heading up Venezula’s Orinoco River he takes a “distributory” that connects to the Amazon. Taking the Les Negros River off the Amazon he gets to within 100 miles of a tributary of the River Plate which gets him to Buenos Aires.

Approaching St Marks today we saw what seemed to be about 100 boats on a shoal three miles offshore. Turns out it is scallop season and families are wading around picking up scallops by the handful. Much easier than how we used to do it Bass Strait in 60 feet of water during winter. Shields Marina at St Marks turned out to be much better than we envisaged. At only $.70 cents a foot per night it is about the cheapest we have stayed at. Fuel was 50 cents a gallon cheaper than Panama City and the facilities here are quite well appointed.