Dog River Marina, Mobile, AL - 11/19/10

After a very nice anchorage about 1/2 mile up Big Bayou Cannot at MM 16.9 on the Mobile River, we awoke to a beautiful day. If you click the picture you can see our friends, Dave and Brenda (The Old Grouch) anchored just a few hundred feet from our raft up. They were in the group picture yesterday when we got together for dinner. Since they are from Canada and Skip spent quite a bit of time there with his job, they entertained us with stories. When we broke the raft, Ricki manned the anchor windless and washed the mud off the 70 feet of chain we had out for the night. As we were leaving the bayou, Stan (Next Endeavour) had earlier offered a yet to be named prize for the first alligator sighting. The first mate sighted what she thought was one since she is so competitive that turned out to be a "dead head" so ... game on! The 14 mile swing bridge only had an 8 foot clearance so after hailing it we were informed that a train was coming and we would need to wait. Between the current and ebb tide, we backed up a piece to wait. Another water traveling sport was to spot bald eagles which we were able to finnally photograph in

the

top of the tree. As we motored into Mobile, the magnitude of the activity is awesome. I think we all had an idea of what to expect but it definately exceeded that. I screwed up one of the pictures coming thru Mobile but I wanted BYC Pink to see the futuristic tugs they are using here so wherever the pic lands ... that is what it is.

After what seemed like miles going past all the ships and tugs, we get to the big water which has crab pots in it as soon as we turned toward Dog River. This water is very shallow and we saw a lot of numbers below six feet in depth. The marinas are very much alike except this one has a large repair facility that we will take advantage of on Monday. At one marina on the Ohio River we found ourselves aground next morning and had to ease off but we did hear some solid sounds. Then going into Pirates Cove on the Tenn-Tom we bumped a submerged dredge pipe. Between the two incidents we have developed an annoying small vibration so we are going to pull the boat, clean the bottom and put on the spare props Monday. They do have a prop shop here so they can repair the removed ones. I told Ricki it may cost us $2,000 for the work so that way when it comes in much less she will think we won. Now, back to the alligator contest. On our way back from the repair shop were walking the boardwalk behind the docked boats and saw a small critter (lizzard or something) that Ricki zoomed in on with her camera and tried to pass this off as an alligator but got busted again.

Since we are having the boat work done Monday, we will probably stay until Tuesday before heading east about 10 miles across the gulf to Fairhope, AL where we also plan to spent a couple days. We are going to rent a car for our stay here so we can act like tourist and visit some of the attractions and sample the food. We are joining our traveling buddies in the marina courtesy car for dinner at Carrabbas tonight. Stan and Colleen (Next Endeavour) will be leaving Sunday and heading west to Texas. Skip and Barb (Moor $tuff) are going our way and if we don't travel together we will plan to meet in Port St. Joe next month before the big gulf crossing.

Our position here is N 30 34.076 W 88 05.288