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The hotel is serving breakfast but our kids – Zack, 15, and Juliana, 11 -- are rifling through suitcases in search of bathing suits. It’s late April and the locals are in sweaters, but the 70-degree air temperature seems an inferno after Boston’s bitter cold, and within moments the kids are splashing in the pool to the horror of the housecleaning staff.
Through the magnolia trees and jasmine we can see the Sabine Marina, where the staff at Emerald Coast Sailing is making final preparations for our bareboat adventure.
Since my wife, Christine, and I are catamaran novices, Bill Crouch, owner of the school and charter business, joins instructor Fred Leedy who takes us on a three-hour shakedown in Pensacola Bay.
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The author at the helm of Destiny
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proceeded to destroy the mast on the company’s Hunter 36 by trying to pass beneath a fixed 50-foot bridge. "Took two months to get a new mast shipped," he says, emphasizing the need to thoroughly check out the skills of would-be bareboat skippers. Leedy gives us a lift to the supermarket to buy provisions and later we all meet for beers and burritos at Margarita’s, one of several restaurants on the lively Pensacola Beach boardwalk.
Our 12-day float plan for sailing between Pensacola and Apalachicola, or Cola-to-Cola as the natives say, is ambitious when gauged by the pace of the Old South, and by every measure the Panhandle is just that – graceful and unhurried, an anachronism in these fast-paced times. The regional maxim might easily be -- speed kills.
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