November 12-December 2: Mobile to Clearwater

Mobile Bay is a huge body of water, but it averages only eight foot depths, many areas much shallower.  A wide, dredged channel forms the spine of the bay and allows commercial and naval traffic to access city facilities.  Smaller dredged channels fan out from the main to marinas on each side of the bay.  Channel markers are everywhere and, often, confusing.  One obvious marker, though, is the famous Mobile Bay Lighthouse, which stands on stilts, lighting the way.

The intracoastal waterway cuts across the southern part of the bay as a dredged channel which continues inland past Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, Alabama.  One destination site in this area is Lu Lu's, a restaurant/bar/playground, owned by Jimmy Buffet's sister, located right on the waterway. Fun place!

Moving into the Florida panhandle, the scenery changes dramatically, with colorful beach houses and miles of sand dune barrier islands.  Approaching Pensacola in this area, we were lucky to time a weekend performance by the Blue Angels.  We watched while moving slowly through hundreds of boaters and past thousands of people on shore, all enjoying the show.

We stayed in Panama City for a few days, often exploring the city by bike.  We found a restaurant that offered shucked oysters for five bucks a dozen, the only catch being we had to pretend to watch a foot ball game in the bar.  No problemo!  One thing we really enjoyed were the huge Southern Live Oak trees gracing the stately old homes along the waterfront.  Spanish Moss is partial to those evergreens and hangs like drapes over their branches.  Maybe drapes is the wrong descriptor.  Since, for me, there is something spooky or Gothic about Spanish Moss, perhaps "shroud" would be a better word. Linda took a photo of a beautiful sunset, as you can see below.

Moving east, we transited a channel known in these parts as Florida's Grand Canyon.  It's a twenty five mile-long cut through mostly pine forest.  In some parts of the cut, white rock looks like snow spilling down the banks.  This cut then empties into a wide, shallow body of water surrounded by swamp land, peppered with cypress trees.  Eagles frequent the area.

Next, we visited Apalachicola for a few days.  Docked on Scipio Creek, we had a great view of the shrimp boats and oyster boats coming and going each day.  Of course we ate Apalachicola oysters, and one night watched the huge full moon which last shined this brightly some seventy years ago.

Twenty five miles further east we anchored off the town of Carrabelle behind Dog Island to stage for the one hundred seventy mile run across the Gulf to Clearwater.  Pulling anchor at dawn, we watched the sunrise and traveled at fast cruise for eight and a half hours over big water.  We traveled with a buddy boat for the first third of the trip before their faster boat pulled ahead and out of sight.  While together, though, we heard a very loud "boom" at which time our fin stabilizer moved and shook the boat.  We thought the stabilizer caused the noise until the other captain, traveling perhaps two miles off our beam radioed us asking if we had heard the "explosion"!  Alarmed that we might have inadvertently wandered into a hot fire zone, he called the Coast Guard to report the incident.   They responded after ten minutes and reported that there were navy jets in the area, and what we experienced was a sonic boom.  Impressive!


   

Though we had seen many playful dolphins since Mobile, they were especially numerous in the waters near Clearwater. Harbor.  They loved to surf our bow and stern waves, making a loud smacking noise when they sometimes turned to hit the water on their sides.

I am writing this at Clearwater Harbor Marina, where our boat has been for 16 days,  (though Linda and I were absent for five days to attend a wedding in Guatemala for Linda's nephew, Brian and his bride, Francesca).  We had an absolutely beautiful view of Clearwater Beach and of the artful bridge next to our marina.  This is "bird city", and we have had every sort of sea bird imaginable aboard our vessel.  For two nights, in fact, clouds of black birds (grackles, perhaps?), consisting of tens of thousands of birds in waves stretching three to five miles, covered the evening sky.  Some alighted on our boat and the boats around us.  Not a problem, though, so long as I had a water hose at the ready for cleanup.

We made good use of the wonderful rail to trail bike path allowing north and south transit from the city.  We hit this trail nearly every day, two days biking all the way to Tarpon Springs, sixteen miles north.  In this Greek heritage town, we ate at the famous Hellas Greek restaurant, and visited the still- viable sponge docks.  This trail added much pleasure to our stay in this city.  By the way, the photo of Linda staring at some apparatus, that's a bicycle repair tower, complete with tools and an air pump!  There are several of these along the trail.

Next stop, Venice, Florida!

October 28-November 12: Columbus, MS to Mobile, AL

After a couple of weeks at home, we headed the 780 miles back to Columbus.  Four miles short of our destination our GPS sent us down a dirt road through "Deliverance" country, kicking our heart rates up a few beats.  So far, this is the only time this trip we have been lost, by land or by sea.  Resting a day, we left our slip in the company of two other boats.  After three locks, we three rafted up and enjoyed a grilled pork roast dinner together.  We got to know some great, interesting people, including a retired navy captain, a retired farmer and tow (tug) captain, and a former pitcher for the Texas Rangers.  We were delayed a bit the next morning while a stern anchor had to be extracted from running gear, but this was but a minor blip in what was a beautiful day.  We cruised past the sun-drenched chalk cliffs at Epes, AL, deposited about the same time as the famous White Cliffs of Dover.  These spectacular white walls kept our eyes glued to the river bank for miles.

We next stopped at a marina at Demopolis, Alabama, the last full-service marina until Mobile, 217 miles downstream.  We spent a few days there with John (the navy captain) and Pat, visiting an antebellum mansion and enjoying lunch at the local hospital's cafeteria..

At 5:00 PM each day, the marina held a meeting to coordinate boats leaving in the morning for an early morning lockdown.  With water low because of draught conditions, lockmasters tried to keep lock turnarounds at a minimum.  At 7:00 AM, fifteen of us squeezed into the chamber and uneventfully locked down together.  On this part of the waterway, the river follows its natural course, with no artificial cuts to alter its serpentine shape.  We stopped at Bobbie's Fish Camp one night, rafting off with eleven other boats on a dock which had face room for four.  The next misty morning, the twelve of us stacked up in a lock, then moved downstream to pick out our next destination.  We picked a secluded, tight, little cut off the river to raft alongside, bow to stern with John and Pat, each putting out an anchor to keep us centered and off the shore. Having used this technique for the first time for each of us, we congratulated ourselves and slept well that night in the most enjoyable anchorages of the trip so far.

Cruising past increasingly swampy banks, we finally approached Mobile, the sixth largest port in the U.S.  Passing naval shipyards and commercial loading facilities at idle speed, we entered Mobile Bay, a huge body of water with an average depth of eight feet.  A channel through the center of the bay with a depth of 35 feet allows commercial traffic to enter the harbor.  Smaller channels with dredged depths of 8 feet cut east and west from the main channel.  One of these took us west to Dog River Marina, where we stayed for six days to rest, ride our bikes, and allow for maintenance on our boat. Our stay here was a welcome respite, but for the moment of panic Linda experienced  when she came  eye to eye with a possum who took refuge in our trash can. 

Renting a car, we went across the bay to visit the pretty little town of Fairhope, AL, multiple winner of national and international  awards for green space architecture and floral plantings.  We walked the town, smelled the roses, and ate at Shux, a seafood restaurant on a fishing pier that stretched  our into the bay.  I had oysters on the half shell and gumbo.  Linda had a skewer of grilled shrimp and calamari.  Our kind of place!  After boat maintenance , we will next cross the bay and follow the intercoastal waterway east.