Tensaw River to Orange Beach, marina

Fun fact: There are 3 twilights each and every morning. Astronomical twilight, when there's just a hint of light blue in the sky. Nautical twilight, when you can just start to navigate with some confidence. And civil twilight, the brightest part before the dawn. Today we were underway at nautical twilight.

As a result we were drifting into Mobile, Alabama, right around 10:45 am. That gave us time to walk a dog then grab us some lunch before getting underway again. It also gave us some time to stall a bit. The winds were up and that meant the bay would be choppy. The couple of hours in delay allowed that to all settle, as predicted. As a result, our 3 hour trip across the bay was quite lovely. Seas about 1 foot, mostly on our stern, which is a comfortable way to take them. 

I spy Mobile!

You'll notice there's a 90 degree turn off the main channel to get us onto the bay. The channel, which goes directly from the gulf to Mobile, is wide enough and deep enough for two tanker ships to pass one another. To accomplish this, the channel is dredged almost constantly. What the dredgers bring up is dumped into well marked "spoil areas". Our straight line to the port was us going in between 2 of these areas. From then on the depths in the bay range around 7 to 12 feet. So, back into the skinny waters.

Tasty lunch at Squid Ink. Tuna poke bat,
street cauliflower, and fried deviled eggs.

Last long day, for a while. We hope. 

We plan on staying 2 nights, maybe longer. We're squeezed between the nor'easter and a major low, so the winds are going to be a thing for a while. Under normal circumstances we're 4 days from Appliachicola, then we'll start the trip around the Gulf. We'll see how the weather affects the near future.

First big water we've seen in a while

MOVIES!!!

Getting settled in Turkey Point.

Keep in mind, this is RIGHT OFF the channel.

You can see a boat zoom by. We had a couple of tows

come by during the night, too.

Getting into and leaving Demopolis lock, after our engine issue.

We're not the fastest boat but we were that day.

Alegria was already in the lock, ahead of us by just a few minutes.

We followed her into the anchorage.

We picked our spot due to its close proximity to the 

boat ramp for dog walking.

We hit something!!!

As we slowly move on you see Russ checking hatches for 

any water intrusion. It was that hard.