After a perfect anchorage in Three Rivers Lake it was time to go. This day would be a long one of almost 80 miles and so again we departed at 0600. The fog delayed us a bit but not too much. Bob let me lead the way out of this anchorage (he had shown the way in) and back to the river. Gee thanks Bob! As usual I had laid down a track on the chart plotter when we entered the anchorage the previous evening. So, leaving is just a matter of reversing my track and following it out. Funny thing though. I had erased the track for some reason and memory and eye site were our only tools. Terri is very good at this and I was glad to have her eyes and sixth sense. It was still dark and a bit foggy, but we did manage to find the hole in the trees where we had entered. Once we had found that, it was just a matter of not hitting any trees that had fallen into the river or not touching bottom. We did both and were glad of it. This little trip out to the river took us 30 minutes which could be a very valuable 30 minutes of daylight at the end of the day.
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| LEAVING IN THE EARLY DAYLIGHT |
Mobile AL. was a big city and we would traverse through the very busy industrial port. Bob on Spirit Dancer was stationed here for a year in his Coast Guard days. He gave us a VHF tour of the highlights as we wound our way through the channel.
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| BRAND NEW CONTAINER FACILITY |
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| BIG INDUSTRY JUST AROUND THE BEND |
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| HOW MANY PORTABLE TOILETS DOES ONE TUG NEED? |
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| BRAND NEW BRIDGE NOT EVEN IN OPERATION YET? |
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| SPIRIT DANCER, ARE THEY PASSING OR BEING PASSED? LOL! |
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| MOBILE AL. |
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| THE LATEST IN U.S. NAVY MIGHT! A MODULAR SHIP THAT CHANGES MODULES TO SUIT THE SITUATION |
We saw our first working Shrimp boats after we had left Mobile on our way to Dog River Marina. There were all different sizes from a full crew to smaller vessels of only two crew members. One thing they all had in common was that they figured they owned the bay and the narrow channel. They seemed to want to work in areas that were supposed to be navigation channels. No law against this I suppose, but it just didn’t make sense to me. They had the whole bay! Maybe the shrimp were concentrated in the area of heavy boat traffic. Regardless we managed to work around them like everybody else and all was well.
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| CONVENTION CENTER IN MOBILE AL. |
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| SHIP IN DRY DOCK |
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| SPIRIT DANCER DWARFED BY OCEAN GOING VESSELS |
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| LEAVING MOBILE BAY |
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| FIRST SHRIMP BOAT |
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| MUCH SMALLER SHRIMPER STILL IN THE CHANNEL THOUGH |
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| PELICAN TAKING FLIGHT |
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CIRCA JULY 2010 WHEN ALL THESE GOOD PEOPLE AGREED THAT MY BALLS JUST WERE NOT BIG ENOUGH
L TO R GLENN, GREG, MIKE, SOLANGE, MARK |
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| TURNS OUT THEY WERE CORRECT LOOK AT ME NOW!! |
We arrived in Dog River Marina armed with reservations. But they were indeed full up and all they had left for us was the fuel dock. Not a big deal really it just might be busy. Oh well we were only going to stay a day or two and then be gone. As it turned out we had the best spot. It seems like we were on the corner of “busy street” and “smart ass street”. A lot of the loopers had to go past our location in order to leave the marina or whatever. It seems like I can’t do anything like fill the water tanks or wash the boat without some smart ass looper offering me tips and telling me what I was doing wrong. I loved it, but I just can’t understand why they all were picking on me. Lol!
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| THIS POOR DOVE FLATTENED HIS BEAK TRYING TO FLY THROUGH OUR WINDOW. HE HUNG AROUND FOR A COUPLE HOURS RE-COOPERATING |
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| VIEW OF MOBILE BAY BEHIND MARINA |
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| TERRMAR AT DOG RIVER MARINA FUEL DOCK |
We haven’t seen Frank and Carrie from Once Around since Green Turtle Bay and again we enjoyed a pleasant hour on their boat. They had invited us to dinner but Terri and I were just too pooped. But the visit and catching up with them was fun and we learned that Carrie will be flying home to complete a mother of the bride task. That being, to help daughter pick out her wedding dress. Frank will be all alone here for three days. What ever will he do? Check their blog frankncare.blogspot.com to see what a Captain does when the first mate is away. Way to go Frank!
Other than grocery shopping, a trip to West Marine, and a quick bite to eat at a wonderful BBQ Restaurant Dog River Marina was very uneventful. We ended up staying an extra day here as the weather promised a more pleasant trip to Biloxi MS. If we were patient
Cheers, Mark
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