At Home in Columbus

When we get to Columbus it feels like coming home.  We have spent time here in the past and the marina staff are like old friends.  We know where to find things and best places to eat in town.  We can leave Miss Lauren Grace and feel confident they will keep an eye on her while we are away.
Since getting here we have been busy moving the truck up from Florida and getting ready to go to Boise (yea!).  We leave in a day or so and hope to be back by May 5th or 6th and continue on up the rivers somewhere.

Yesterday I was doing laundry and the preliminary packing, as well as trying to catch up on computer work and finish these blog entries.  Larry was making sure the truck was ready to travel and doing a few boat chores.  This afternoon we looked up and noticed a really big boat making its way to the dock, naturally Larry had to go and investigate.

The boat was the American Canadian Cruise Lines 175' Niagara Prince, we understand that she was cruising from New Orleans to Knoxville.  At various times of the year the Niagara Prince and her sister ships the Grande Mariner & the Grande Caribe cruise the waters from New Orleans to Chicago, the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway from the Bahamas to New York, the Erie Canal, Lake Ontario and the coast of Maine & Nova Scotia.  Each vessel carries 65 to 100 passengers and the fares range from about $3,500 to $6,000 per person.  They have some neat sounding itineraries and it would be a great way to see the waterways if you aren't interested in boat ownership.

You know that we boat owners are always thinking about the next boat, aka as a bigger boat; but I gotta' tell you that I wouldn't relish the idea of backing something like this into a dock!

Morning on the Water

Many of you know that Larry and I prefer to not actually witness sunrise. We have a zillion photos (oops, don’t let the folks up in Washington hear that there is such a number... at least not with a $$$ sign in front of it) of sunsets but very few of sunrise.  Sometimes though, when we are traveling, early departures are just unavoidable. However after eaving Mobile while traveling up the Tenn-Tom Waterway anchorages and marinas are few and far between making long days, and thus early departures, a necessary evil.

I must admit that on a warm, sunny morning it is a sublime experience to listen to the bird songs and enjoy the morning hush before we crank up the noisy old CATS to get underway. Not that I want to make a habit of it mind you, because those sunsets and twilight can be pretty spectacular too.

Spring morning at Sumter Morning Anchorage above Demopolis.  This is one of our favorite anchorages

The reason we choose to get underway early rather than enjoy that extra sleep in the morning is because on this particular stretch of water you never know what you might find. The river is constantly changing and shifting and silting in; if we arrive at a planned anchorage late and find that it has shoaled too much for us to enter we may not have enough daylight to find a safe haven. By starting early we can stop early if our planned anchorage is good, if it is not then we have a window of time to push farther before dark.  Then again late afternoon in a quiet anchorage is hard to beat, especially with scenes like this to enjoy

Generally we plan on it being a 5 day trip upstream from Mobile to Columbus, MS, this year was no exception.  This trip we encountered a lot of current below Coffeeville Lock probably due to two factors. First the river is tidal all the way to Coffeeville and the tide was against us and secondly there had been some rain about 24 hours before we started up and the river drains a large area in the mountains of Alabama. Tributaries include the Alabama River that goes to Montgomery and the Black Warrior that goes to Birmingham. The only real harm was that we had to push the power up to meet our goals which resulted in burning a little more fuel this trip. Basically I guess we spent what we saved last fall with the fast current taking us down. 

High water levels and the fast currents associated with it, along with wake from the many boats (commercial, recreational, and local) combine to wreck havoc with the riverbanks along much of the waterway

You can see that the landowners try just about anything to save their bank.  Here the big home has had old concrete paving trucked in & dumped.  We also see old tires, wood or concrete bulkhead and regular rip-rap stone.  It appears none are totally successful.

Notice the size of the tree that was eroded to the point that it just fell over.

The home/cabin below has been abandoned and none too soon, you can see that the front corner is no longer supported. 

The scenery is diverse as you can see, the white cliffs are near Epes and they are not limestone but a chalk like rock that is even softer than limestone. I find it interesting that on one side are these high nearly pure white rock banks, while only a few miles up or downstream the rock is grey with the rusty streaks from minerals in the runoff water.

 At anchorage in pretty little Foscue Creek near Demopolis, AL we saw the USCG Buoy Tender Wedge moored at the Coast Guard Station there. They could really have used a little of her services on the river below Demopolis where many of the navigation marks have fallen victim to the erosion mentioned above.

This Daymark is about to become another victim of the bank erosion.

On our last day before reaching Columbus we passed a string of nice homes and one had this houseboat sitting out front. This has to be one of my favorite ever boat names!

Busy Times in Port of Mobile

When we came up Mobile Bay last week we realized that it’s been four years since we first brought Lauren Grace up from the Gulf on our first cruise with her. A lot has changed in those years, not the least of which was the increase in activity that we observed in the Port of Mobile. There is a huge new cruise ship that was put into service last fall; unfortunately she was not in port the day we transited so I couldn’t include a photo of her. I did get these shots of container ships being loaded. I hope that you can see the crane setting the blue container (looks like a boxcar) in its place on the stack in this photo

In this shot the huge tugboat is applying pressure to keep the ship tight against the wharf during the loading process. Partly this is necessary because of the wakes caused by the activity in the area and partly due to the effect that the tide has on the current and thus the movement of the ship

This shot is of a “dry-dock”. In other words a ship is pushed into this docking device, the water is pumped out and the dock with the ship is raised to the surface in order to provide a dry platform from which to work on the ship. The tarp is probably not hiding any trade secrets; rather it is being used to contain the dust & material sanded from the ship’s hull.

Industry in Mobile is doing better than in many places during this downturn. The shipbuilding firm Austal, working in some sort of partnership with General Dynamics just completed one of the Navy’s new littoral combat ships – LCS2 now known as the U.S.S. Independence. We were lucky enough to actually get to see the new LCS as she was moored in the shipyard when we came down to Mobile last fall. They are claiming that the tri-maran can move its weapons around faster than any other ship in the Navy.  The top photo below shows the Mobile skyline in the background as she is underway and the bottom photo is how we saw her last fall.  Disregard the date stamp on the bottom picture, I got this from another source because we were a little too busy dodging debris to take any photos last fall.

Do yourself a favor and follow the links above to learn more about the newest ship in our Navy’s line.  By the way littoral means “close to shore”, and that's where these ships will operate. They're tailor-made for launching helicopters and armored vehicles, sweeping mines and firing all manner of torpedoes, missiles and machine guns.

Austal also built the gigantic and controversial Hawaiian “super ferry”.

This cool picture is of the LCS2 sitting in the ways at the Austal Yard.  Larry thinks this shot is awesome.

A short distance up the Mobile River from the actual Port work is progressing on the huge new ThyssenKrupp Steel and Stainless USA  mill that will be one of the world’s most sophisticated carbon and stainless steel processing facilities. I read somewhere that the project is currently the largest private industrial investments in the U.S.  It is a welcome case of job in-sourcing in the U.S. at a time when many companies are moving jobs overseas. The project will create an estimated 2,700 permanent jobs domestically when it becomes fully operational in 2010.

I’m guessing that means that traffic will continue to increase on this stretch of water.

Here you can see the work being done at the loading docks for the steel mill

Miss Lauren Grace is on the Move

I almost hesitate to say it but I have decided to be bold and say that spring has finally sprung. For the past 10 days the weather has been glorious here on the Northern Gulf Coast and we have been enjoying it.

With friends aboard we left our friendly winter home, Port St. Joe Marina, on the first day of spring and had a beautiful ride outside to Panama City. For you non-boaters out there the term “outside” means that a boat travels in the large body of water (in this case the Gulf of Mexico) as opposed to traveling in the ICW which is generally more protected. It’s nice to run outside because it is often (but not always) a shorter distance and there aren’t any “no wake zones”; it can be rough out there as well so we try to pick & choose our days and that day was glorious. The forecast however was for deteriorating weather so we decided to forego a planned return visit to Crooked Island, where the photos below were snapped, (see entry dated March 13, 2010) and head on into a marina in Panama City. This proved to be a VERY good decision.

The next morning was windy and cloudy with rain in the forecast. Our friends, Pete & Linda, had driven down and thanks to a little help from friends on "Eagle One" we had already positioned a car in Panama City with an eye to playing automobile hopscotch across the Panhandle.  By doing this we could ensure that their car would be available when they were ready to drive home. Accordingly we took advantage of the rainy day to send the boys back to PSJ to manage a car switcheroo. While they were gone the front came through and we saw nearly 3 foot waves in the marina, most definitely this was not the sort of day to go “outside”!! Heck, for a while it was so rough that we didn't feel comfortable trying to get off the boat and to the dock. Thank goodness that extreme only lasted for 3-4 hours before things began to calm down.

After a long layover at PC waiting for the winds to settle down we enjoyed a nice ride across Choctawhatchee Bay (see entry dated January 19, 2010) before taking another lay day in Fort Walton and then enjoying a beautiful anchorage near Pensacola. Continuing west we had a fun lunch at Lu-Lu’s (a restaurant owned by Jimmy Buffet's "Crazy Sista", Lucy) and a spectacular anchorage in one of our favorite places, Ingram Bayou, before Pete & Linda had to leave us and head back to work.

After a calm run up Mobile Bay we arrived in Fairhope, AL (one of our favorite places, in fact we might just move here when we grow up) for a quick visit with our old friends the Kelley's.  Reluctantly we left there on Wednesday and ran across to the West side of Mobile Bay to fuel up and wait out a day of bad weather before we begin our trek North on the Tenn-Tom. I had hoped to snag a courtesy car for a visit to see the spring blooms at Bellingrath Gardens while we were here in Dog River but none was available so we amused ourselves by fighting off noseeums (which were biting like the devil) and watching this pelican fish for his dinner.

We are set to head North tomorrow, hopefully the rains will hold off for another week and we will have an easy run with very little current as we head up to Columbus, MS where we hope to leave the boat while we go to Boise and visit the girls