By the time I had my second coat of new varnish on the handrails this morning, they had increased the water level forecast for Coffeeville (already in flood stage) lock to go UP instead of down by Thursday, so we're driving home for a while to watch the river levels. WHen it looks like it's going to be good, we'll drive back.

Stuck Again!

We're in Fairhope, AL near Mobile on Mobile Bay, ready to go up the rivers, but torrential rainstorms across Alabama and Mississippi have the rivers in flood. There is a good NOAA website, that has actual and forecast river levels, which shows the rivers in flood well into next week, so we may be stuck here another 7 days. We're thinking about driving home for a few days if the predictions are for more than 5 or 6 days.

We drove up to see the Mobile River and the Tombigbee river and they were flooding over their banks in places and had loads of debris and whole trees floating downstream. This boat ramp on the Tombigbee is usually about 40 ft. longer to get to the water, since the water levels are up about 20 ft. here. With the increased current, which we'd be fighting upstream and all of the the logs and debris, we're not going to go. Also, most of the bridges are 52 ft. tall and with 29 ft of increased water levels in some places, we might not be able to get under the bridges.

Since Fairhope, AL is on the Eastern shore of Mobile Bay, there are nice sunsets here. Also, Fairhope is a cute, knicky-Knacky town to go visit. Hopefully, the rivers will drop faster than predicted and we'll be out of here next week. We may go across the bay to Dog River Marina instead since there's no cell phone reception here, no TV hookup, can't use our sattelite dish TV and almost no internet (I'm using the wireless from a marina across the creek from ours). We'll just have to wait and see. The only good thing about this marina is that we're in a covered slip so the boat is in shade all day and I'm refinishing our teak handrials while we're here. You can't varnish teak in the sun, when it's windy, when it's raining, or in the morning and evening dew, so it's hard to find a good time to do it.

We were supposed to be home about April 7th from this trip, but with Kathy's Dallas problems, waiting for waves and waiting for floods, it looks like we'll be home after the middle of May.

We're in Fairhope, AL on Mobile Bay,

It was just a gray day all day today, except when it was raining just as we entered Mobile Bay. When we did, we were in a narrow marked channel and it was raining so hard you could only see a few hundred feet in front of the boat. Of course, that was the only time we passed another boat in the whole gigantic bay, and it came out of the gloom and rain towards us in the channel. It didn't even show up on radar, probably because of the rain deluge. We saw it far enough in advance to leave plenty of room, but that did manage to add a little adrenalin to the otherwise dull afternoon.

This is our last stop in saltwater before going up the rivers to Columbus, MS. The wave forecast for Mobile Bay is good, but the rivers are forecast to rise to near flood stage, so we'll be running against the current and will have to watch for flotsam coming at us.

We're in Pensacola Beach, FL at the Perdido Key Oyster Bar and Marina, which is just a few feet from the Florida/Alabama state line.

It's really a very nice marina because it's right on the ICW so you don't have to go miles up Pensacola Bay to the city and come back down the next day. Nonchalance is on the dock at the right in this picture and the big restaurant is above the docks at the end of this dock. The restaurant overlooks the ICW and beautiful East and West views of the gulf from their windows. Also, it is completely new becasue it was destroyed by a Hurricane in 2004 and was rebuilt in 2006. Because it's on the key, you can walk about a mile across the key to the gulf beach, but we decided not to. We did get Oysters Rockefeller from the oyster bar though.

On the way here, we cruised through the ICW and the bays, mostly in the Santa Rosa Sound. The South side of the ICW is always the gulf barrier islands and is frequently pretty white sand dunes with beaches on the ICW and the gulf.




At one wide spot in the ICW, there was a kite surfer running the channel. He could really zip fast because the kite reached above the dunes to catch the 20 MPH breeze blowing today, but the water in the ICW behind the dunes was very calm.





Tomorrow we're going to Mobile Bay where we'll stay at the Fairhope, AL marina. We'll get our car from Carrabelle, FL on Tuesday and pick up our cruising buddy, Bill Stone who also has his boat at Farihope. Then we'll both cruise up the rivers starting on Thursday.

We're at Sandestin, FL, staying at the huge Beach Resort Marina, which is really a golf resort and marina with the emphasis on golf.

A very nice cruise today through ICW and the inland bays again. That is after we finally got away from the dock. The marina where we stayed last night had us close to a wall on our stern and very close to another boat on our bow, plus there was a breeze blowing us towards the dock. That makes it very hard to move the boat out (because it doesn't move sideways) and the wind wanted to push us back in towards the other boat and the dock. After 2 attempts to push off and "walk" the boat with props and rudders, I finally used a cross stern like a spring line to let me get the bow out enough to clear the boat in front of us. I should have done that first. Then Kathy told me I should have just gone forward when we had a little space between us and the boat in front (even though I could tell the wind wouold close that space before wer were past). I didn't need that help from the Admiral, but we did get out safely.

The ICW was almost all dug through white sand in this area, compared to the cypress swamps yesterday.











This afternoon, we passed through the "Grand Canyon" ICW, which is not much more than where they dug a channel through 40 ft of sand instead of the more usual 10 ft elevations. Hardly the grand canyon, but I see where they get the name. After all, in Florida, a 40 ft. elevation is almost the high point of the state.


Dolphins happily surfed our wake again. I just can't resist adding another dolphin jumping video.

We're in Panama City, FL.

When we were driving to the boat in Carrabelle, we kept seeing lots and lots of motorcycles traveling the small backroads highways here, and now we know why.... tbe Panama City "Thunder Beach" rallye is today. The entire downtown is packed full of people, old car shows, fancy motorcycles, street food vendors and locals. It's a real happening. For dinner we had pork BBQ on a stick and a plate of noodles from one of the stalls. Not bad, actually.

We cruised the bays and ICW today with calm seas and temps near 80 degrees. A very nice day. Half of the cruising in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) was in the protected channels behind the barrier islands, and the other half was in the large bays, also protected by barrier islands. The combination of both makes it an interesting cruise day. The tide channels look like they have been dug like a canal, although some of them are natural and winding like a river, caused by tidal flows.

The natural tide channels are mostly lined with saltwater swamps and cypress trees. It's impossible to tell how far back the swamps go from the channel because the undergrowth is so thick, but it looks very deep, dark, buggy and swampy.




The tide channels connect the bays and inlets, which are wide enough to look like lakes, but frequently very shallow, requiring a marked channel to transit them in a boat that draws more than 2 ft of water.


In the big bays, the dolphins joined us and surfed our wake frequently. Since blodspot now accepts videos, I had fun shooting video of the dolphins jumping. First there was a group of three that surfed along with us on starboard for at least 10 minutes. Then they disappeared, like maybe we cruised to the end of their "territory". Then a while later, this group of five surfed our port side for about 15 minutes. They just really have fun surfing and jumping. This short video has one of the longest dolphin jumps I have ever seen. I know I put in too many dolphin shots in this blog, but I'm just enthused every time I see them.

When we arrived at the Panama City Marina, there was a US Customs and Border Protection boat just coming in. We were doing about 10 MPH and it passed us at about 40 MPH. It looks like they could go 60 MPH if they wanted to.... with FOUR 225 HP outboards! I asked the CBP agents if it was OK to take a picture of their boat and they said it was but I couldn't include their faces, They were very nice and professional men.

We're going on to Destin, FL tomorrow.