Nov 11
Great anchorage last night protected on all sides by trees. The tidal current held our boat in the same direction all night. After a quick cup of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner we crashed very hard and were sleeping by 8PM. We slept deeply without issues after that long and tiring previous day. Woke up in time to watch the sun rise into our anchorage.
Rise and Shine to a new day!
Leaving our idealic anchorage
Back to the nice leisurely pace we like today. Got up and then cooked a nice breakfast. Despite 7 boats lined up in the anchorage no one seemed in a hurry but by 8AM and no fog in sight anchors were being lifted and boats departed. We followed suit. Our day was basically 15 miles more of river travel including the transit through downtown Mobile and then another 15 miles heading westward across Mobile Bay to our destination – Fairhope. Docked in a covered slip by 12:30.
The tow "Barbara" hard at work
The lowest part of the river reminds us of Florida and the St. John’s River where we lived due to the flat lands, slow moving water, Spanish moss and palmetto fronds along the banks. Next comes the industrial river with all the barge staging areas that leads to the city proper with a small waterfront area (although it was big enough for a Carnival cruise ship). That’s followed by Austal’s commercial shipbuilding area fabricating 400’ aluminum water jet powered trimarans for the military. Quite impressive.
Leaving downtown Mobile in our wake
Cruise ship "Carnival Fantasy" at Mobile waterfront
Military craft being fabricated at Austal shipyard
The water finally leads out into the Mobile Bay proper where we were greeted by our first dolphin sightings in months. The ship channel has deep water but most of the bay is shallow with water only 8-11’ deep so it felt a bit treacherous. No issues today as the seas were calm but we hear they can build quickly and be quite nasty. Shallow water is something we’ll need to get used to as much of the panhandle and western Florida waters aren’t very deep.
Fairhope city pier - known for it's sunsets
Too cloudy for a sunset. Pretty fountain as it got dark out
We’ve heard lots of great things about Fairhope so are looking forward to spending a few more days here. All that hard pushing to get somewhere secure today looks like it has paid off. Despite a delightfully warm day today we’re looking at rain all night followed by potential gale force northerly winds with dropping temperatures and overnight lows on Wed. into the 20’s. Hopefully the cold will be short lived.
Journey for Nov 11
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