Transition

(Sun June 28)

And so it begins our trek north. We left the marina early in anticipation of a busy day traveling into and through the Mobile Shipping channel. As we entered the bay we bravely cut north and off our magenta line. We figured we could travel along side the shipping channel and avoid any confrontations with tankers or other behemoths. Today was a quiet day, there was only one that we mirrored as we traveled along, but ¾ of the way up he turned around and headed back out to sea. We could only guess that his paperwork was not in order, or there was no tug available for him once he got into port. Who knows for sure, but it’s fun to speculate. Anyway that was our only competition for the channel today. There were plenty of little fishers buzzing around and a few sail boats, but otherwise it was strangely absent of any large vessels. Just about 3 miles before we began our port excursion a larger cruiser began speeding along from a starboard lane and cut into the lane ahead of us – guess who – yup, “Bout Time” we thought for sure they’d be long gone up the river by now.

The Mobile port area is very much like any other major metropolis port, huge cranes unloading and/or loading tankers. There were a couple of larger vessels, long forgotten and abandoned. We saw so many different kinds of vessels all in the course of one hour; one with large open vents and then a strange military looking ship with a large gun turret on the bow and a dingy lift on the side for quick deployment – But no name – curious….

Just past the downtown convention center the landscape became very marshy then further along the trees got a little taller. There were numerous speed boater pulling tubers and water skiers up and down the river. We even noticed one small speed boat loaded with about 8 ice chests cautiously duck under a RR bridge and disappear up a small outlet. We decide to call it an early day and anchored off the Mobile River, off the Tensas cutoff and in the Big Brier Creek. It’s still pretty hot so we ran the generator to cool off the staterooms; otherwise we did nothing for the rest of the afternoon but enjoy the quiet scenery and try to stay cool. As night moved in the noises picked up all around as all the little critters come out once the sun had gone down.