We're in salt water, almost in Florida! We're staying at the Homeport Marina which has a very popular restaurant in the ICW named Lulu's, owned by Jimmy Buffet's sister, Lulu. We ate dinner there last night and it was very good, especially the onion rings. The oft discussed "LA Caviar" (Lower Alabama caviar is just black eyed peas and condiments), was just OK but the grilled fish and fried oysters were great.

Last night, we anchored in Bates Lake, which is 54 miles up the Black Warrior River from Mobile. While we were there, another Hatteras Owner's Forum members, Bill and Kathleen Root in their Hatteras 43DC "Tucandu", came and anchored nearby. I got this nice picture in the morning fog.

Yesterday we went down the rivers to Mobile and across 25 miles of Mobile Bay to the ICW. There was fog in the morning again, but it burned off by 8:30. We passed by the Boise paper plant in Alabama, where Tom Drouin previously had arranged a factory tour. We have passed it before, but never had time to stop there.

In Mobile, we passed this superfast Navy tri-hull ship, just completing construction.











We also were passed by this huge conatiner freighter coming into port.










And we saw this large freighter from Hong Kong delivering huge new gantry cranes to the port of Mobile. The cranes are just bolted to the deck of the ship. They're going to need a bigger crane to get these big cranes off the ship.




Out in Mobile Bay, it was warm and sunny enough to go enjoy the ride from the flybridge. It's nice to be out in the wide open spaces and salt water, compared to the rivers, watching for debris in the floods, and it's getting warmer as we go South.





We decided to laze around here in this area instead of going on to Apalachicola, FL for a good weather window to cross the Gulf to Clearwater Tuesday night. We'll probably start cruising again Monday and will just wait for the next crossing window.