We're in Florida!

We cruised from Mobile, AL to Pensacola, FL today, a very nice cruise in 65 to 70 degree temps.

We went past the Mobile Bay Light, built in 1886.













Then we were in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway most of the day. It's a canal behind the barrier islands on the gulf, connecting the many bays and inlets along the gulf. It makes for a natural protection for gulf waves and is kept dredged for boat traffic.




And past Lulu's Restaurant (Jimmy Buffet's sister's restaurant).











The most fun was when we stopped at Perdido Key to go to a gulf island beach. It was recommended by a couple of the Hatteras Owners Forum members who have been here. It's really a beautiful beach. Perdido Key is one of the long thin barrier islands protecting Pensacola Bay from the Gulf of Mexico waves. It also forms the sheltered waterway of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway where we were cruising. The key itself is only a few hundred yards wide and many miles long. Both the gulf side and much of the waterway side is lined with beautiful sand beaches. It doesn 't seem to be a National Seashhore or a park, just a very long barrier island.

We just anchored Nonchalance on the waterway side where there is a nice wide spot (abouit 500 yards wide) so we were out of the way of boat traffic. This picture is from the gulf beach dunes back across the waterway where we anchored. Then we got the dinghy out, dingied to the waterway side beach and walked across the dunes to the Gulf side beaches where there's a nice surf.

The beach was about 10 miles long and we only saw one group of people and one fisherman on the whole beach. We almoist had it completely to ourselves! The sand is an extremely fine white sand here and feels good to walk on. Daisy loved it and chased a stick thrown into the water. She just about wore herself out running on the beach.

Of course, we had to hose the salt water off ourselves and Daisy when we got back to the boat.











I was also very happy to see the dolphins again. They caught up with us in many of the small bays connected by the waterway. When we were going slow, they'd surf our bow wave in front of the boat. When we were going faster, they'd surf the bigger side waves right beside the boat, so you could go out on deck and watch them jump and surf right next to you... only about 10 to 15 ft. away! I tried to get pictures of them jumping, but it's almost impossible because the digital camera has a slight delay between pressing the button and taking the picture. By the time it takes a picture, all you get is the splash. Previously, I got jump pictures by guessing when they'd jump anf taking a dozen pictures before I caught one jump. So I have a dozen pictures of splash when they landed and this one picture of one starting to jump. I am absolutely enthralled by watching them surf our side wake.

Tomorrow we're going on to Destin, FL.

The dinghy motor is fixed. It seemed like a fuse had blown to me, but I looked everywhere on the motor and wiring and couldn't find a fuse anywhere. I called Yamaha and they said there was no fise in the motor. I got the Dog River Marina expert to come down and look at it and in about an hour, he found a fuse buried deep in the motor wires that had blown. So the dinghy's all fixed and ready to go.

We'll preposition our car Wednesday and leave here Thursday. Can't leave any earlier because winds are forecast to make Mobile Bay very rough through Wednesday, then calm on Thursday. We have to go about 25 miles through the bay. Then on to Pansacola, Destin, Appalachicola and across the gulf to Florida's west coast again.

We made it to salt water! We're in Mobile, AL at Dog River Marina after 3 days on the rivers by ourselves with no marinas and seeing almost no other boats except a dozen big barges, a few bass boats and a few cruisers. The rivers are almost empty and, of course, cold. The day we spent in Demopolis started with a crunching sound, as we slept, at 6 AM. I got up, put some clothes on and went up to see a sailboat names Island Time leaving the docks past our boat. He had been docked right in front of us and when he left he scraped something on his boat against our anchor, because it sticks out in front of our bow and he had miscalculated his docking abilities. I only knew this because I found a 1 inch flap of blue paint stuck to my anchor. No damage to our boat, but I thought he should have stopped to investigate or say he's sorry.

The first night after Demopolis, AL we anchored Bashi Creek, which is a very nice anchorage with a park and boat launch. When we got there we found that sailboat Island Time anchored in the creek also! It turns out that his motor burned up 4 miles from Bashi Creek, which is 70 miiles from anywhere that can service a boat! The only other cruiser on the river that day had towed him the 4 miles to Bashi Creek. I felt so bad about his predicament that I was very friendly about his hitting our anchor. It turned out that the paint scraped off of his dinghy outboard motor. The Demopolis Marina had agreed to send a towboat down with 2 crew the next day, drive a car down to oick them up and bring a new crew to tow him back to Demopolis to fix his engine. Yikes! I can't even imagine how much that's going to cost him. When we took Daisy to the boat launch that night, our dinghy motor starter wouldn't work, so we paddled the dinghy with Daisy then and the next night and two mornings.

Luckily, we were able to anchor close to a boat ramp last night too, so we didn't have far to paddle the dinghy to get Daisy to shore 3 times. It was at an old, abandoned lock named "Lock One Cutoff". There was a very nice park there, great for walking dogs. That made for a longer, 110 mile, trip today but we got an early start and arrived at the marina by 4 PM.

When we got to the Coffeeville lock, the Delta Queen riverboat was just finishing locking up as we waited to lock down. The Delta Queen was one of the last real stern wheeler riverboats carrying passengers on river cruises. The Coast Guard refused to renew it's commercial license last year due to fire hazard of the wood superstructure, so it is being decommissioned. This is the last trip steaming up the rivers for this grand old lady, and with no passengers.










Then, when you get to Mobile, the river is full of boats, people working on the docks and big boats, streets with traffic streaming along.... stuff like we haven't seen for 3 days. Mobile is very interesting to cruise through because it's a very large, busy port with big oceangoing ships, huge docks, etc. We were passed in the shipping channel by this HUGE container ship.

Then we passed this huge Navy tri-maran fast boat. For size comparison, there's a pickup truck on the dock in front of the boat.









I went over and got shrimp off the shrimp boats this evening and grilled them for dinner. It's more hassle to remove their heads, etc. but they're very sweet and yummy. We'll be in Mobile 3 days or so, at least until we get the dinghy motor starter fixed.

We finished the Ten-Tom Canal and the Tombigbee River today and are in Demopolis, AL, which is a small town with a nice marina. Next, we'll start cruising the Black Warrior River to Mobile. It was interesting that we saw n boats on the rivers today at all, probably because it was very cold and windy. We just stayed inside and ran the generator and heaters so we were warm. I can't wait to get to Florida where it's nice for boating.

We passed the "White Cliffs of Epes" Alabama. They are very hard white clay cliffs, and rather pretty in the sunlight. Not exactly the white cliffs of Dover, but interesting nonetheless.





There were also a number of very large, inviting, sand beaches along the river. This one was probably about 2 miles long around a bend in the river.










Here's a shot of our GPS screen coming down to Demopolis. The dark black line is our "track" where the boat went and the arrow point at the end of it is our boat at the time I took this picture. While you can see we're heading generally South towards Demopolis, in the lower right hand corner of the screen, look at all the twists and turns in typical river travel routes. Now you know why "river miles" are so much more than "road miles" between any two places.

We decided to stay one day in Demopolis because tonight the temperature is going down to 22 degrees and tomorrow night is is forecast to be 21 degrees, so we prefer staying at a marina where we're plugged in to power and can run heaters at night. The next three days will be on the Black Warrior River and the Mobile River with no marinas and anchoring out, so we'd have to run the generator all night to run heaters and we'd be taking Daisy to shore in the dinghy at 22 degrees in the morning. It's supposed to be close to 30 Thursday night with daytime temps around 60, so we'll go ahead then. Staying here a day will also give me a chance to change the oil and oil filters on both of our diesel engines (5 gallons of oil in each!). It's nice that his marina has a used oil and oil filter recycling dropoff.

Back on the Water Again!!

After 2 months in the Chicago snow and cold, we returned to Nonchalance at Columbus, MS and we're heading south to Florida. It only reached 55 here today, but that's so much better than 5 like it has been in Chicago. We left Columbus this morning after taking a day to re-provision the boat and another to move our car to Mobile, AL, where we'll first get to salt water in about 5 days. The trip on the Ten-Tom Canal and then the Tombigbee River was nice, but all the trees are bare in their winter drab.

This evening we're anchored in a beautiful little Alabama state park called Sumter Landing. It has a great natural bay for anchoring, a boat ramp and little dock where we can land the dinghy and lots of walking trails.





We walked up the park road and Daisy flushed and treed a squirrel (her favorite prey) and smelled lots of other very interesting (to her) smells. As she poked her head into the grasses and bushes, Kathy and I said "That's where she gets the ticks". But you can't keep her from smelling all the smells.

We walked down this nice little park path and the only caution was the sign "Archery deer hunting only". At least Kathy was carrying Daisy's big blaze orange life jacket, so we couldn't be mistaken for deer. I don't know f it's even deer hunting season here.




When we came back to the boat, we did check Daisy and found 3 live ticks still just crawling around on her looking for a nov=ce place to bite. I hope we got them all. When we take her back late this evening, we'll keep her on the short grass.

Tomorrow we're going to Demopolis, AL.

Well, OK - one last post... Kathy said she wanted to come home to see some snow. Well we're home now and here's what the backyard looks like. The river is frozen all the way across and our dock is frozen in. And here I thought a little frost on the boat's handrails a week ago was a "freeze". The forecast is for it to go down to 9 degrees tonight in St. Charles.

Florida will be much appreciated in February.

We're in Columbus, MS, all snugged in for 2 months so we can go back to Chicago for December and January.

There are cypress swamps all around this area. Even getting in to the Aberdeen, MS marina last evening was a little exciting because they have an entrance "channel" that really is just a marked path through the swamps along a creek with channel markers. The water is only 5 to 7 ft deep for about 1/4 mile of winding path and the cypress knees and stumps fill te water just outside the narrow channel.

I do worry a little about "cold snaps" here and whether any water pipes in the boat may freeze. It has been in the 50s and 60s during the day here, but the 30s and 40s at night.

Here's a picture of what you don't want to see when you get up in the morning. It's frost on the handrails last week at Joe Wheeler State Park marina on the Tennessee. Of course, we had heaters on in the boat at night and I had covered the engine room vents with towels and left access doors open to places that might get too cold and freeze a pipe (like the anchor rode locker where the deck washdown water supply pipes are). The problem is that we won't be here to run heaters if we get a very cold spell in December or January. I'll probably get a couple small oil filled radiator type heaters and put one in each engine room. I'll turn the water off and drain some of the valves too.

This will probably be the last entry until We're back around February 1 to go south to Florida where it REALLY IS warm.