November 20, 2011

Slept pretty good until about 2 am.  Got up, tried sleeping on the floor in the salon for a few hours.  Helped some, then went back to bed and slept for awhile.  Jerry was up early.  Checking the batteries, he is very pleased that they are finally holding the proper charge.  We've been struggling with this since we started the trip.

We headed out about 6:45 today.  Only 24 miles to Dog River Marina, Mobile, Alabama. 

On the way out, we passed these kids. They kept up with us for about a mile then turned around and rode our wake.  Couldn't believe they were up so early.








The closer we got to Mobile, the foggier it was. 

We passed some huge cargo ships docked along our way.  This is a heavily industrial part of Mobile.

One of the few ships operating in this fog was Justice, a tow heading to New Orleans, off in the distance.  We followed it out to the open waters.  It was traveling fairly slowly so we could keep up but as soon as it hit the Bay, it took off and we lost it in the fog.

 We picked it up again along with two other tows, hard to see all three, but easy to pick out the huge cargo ship heading into Mobile.

  
This cargo ship rocked our world. Jerry tried to steer into the wake after it passed. We went up and a hard down. I had a large plastic cup of iced tea behind Jerry on the bridge. It went flying and ended up all over everywhere. A lamp in the salon hit the floor. I raced to the salon to grab the TV. I got thrown into the chair. We survived otherwise.

Turning off the main channel into the secondary channel we were into Dog River. To get to the marina, we passed under this bridge.  We got in around 11 am.

After lunch at the Yacht Club, we started cleaning the boat.  In preparation for installing the new radar, Jerry took the radar dome off the arch. 

It felt good to just know we were going to stay put for a few days.