Turn Right and Head West Dec. 20 - 25

This picture of the nautical charts for the Mississippi Sound shows Mobile bay and the path to New Orleans. If you enlarge the picture the route that we took is a black line (actually the black line was the planned route and a thin red line was the actual route.) A boat coming south out of Mobile Bay can go east to Florida or west to Mississippi. We turned right and went towards Mississippi.

We left the Grand Mariner Marina early in the morning just after this beautiful sunrise.

The fishing trawlers were working Mobile Bay as we headed south from Mobile.

We turned west along the intercoastal waterway channel. Kaye decided to feed the birds so the seagulls and pelicans came storming up behind us to catch a piece of bread.

The first night we anchored just north of Horn Island. The next day we pulled into the Ocean Springs (MS) Municipal Harbor. The town of Ocean Springs has an interesting downtown with a visitors center in this converted railroad station and many good restaurants and shops downtown.

One highlight was the Walter Anderson Museum. Anderson, a native son, became a famous artist in paint and ceramics. This museum is next to the Community Center and displays some of his art.

The interior of the community center was painted by Walter Anderson in his unusual style.

Numerous live oaks lined the streets.

Biloxi is just on the other side of this bay from Ocean Springs.

From Ocean Springs we continued west along the intercoastal waterway. There was no pleasure craft out and suddenly I got a call on the VHF radio from Homeland Security. They were in a boat behind us and wanted to board. So we slowed to idle speed and while still heading west three armed Homeland Security Officers boarded at our stern. The visit was friendly except that when the officer in charge called in to alert their superiors who was on board he called us "an elderly couple." This may have been the first time I have ever been called elderly but I wasn't going to argue with men with guns.

The weather was turning bad on Christmas Eve, so we ran a little faster than normal to try to reach a marina in New Orleans on the 23rd. There are two ways to go into New Orleans, either on the intercoastal directly into the Industrial Canal or slightly north and turn into Lake Pontchartrain. We picked a marina on Lake Pontchartrain. The entry gateway to the main portion of Lake Ponchetrain is these bridges. They are a combination of a highway bridge and a railroad bascule bridge positioned right together. (Bascule means a counterbalance at one end balances the other.) Each had to be contacted on the radio to request an opening.

We celebrated our Lord's birthday on our boat. Kaye had brought some decorations from Tarboro in October so we had a Christmas tree and some other decorations.

Katrina destroyed the marinas on Lake Ponchetrain and nearly all the boats in this marina the (South Shore Marina) were lost. All the docks and power pedestals at South Shore have been replaced and updated. There was still some evidence of the damage around the marina. This picture shows damage on a building that was the entry to a floating gambling casino anchored on the east end of the marina. The floating casino is gone and the land based casino closed up.

Mobile, Alabama Bay Dec 17 - 20

The media image of Hurricane Katrina is mainly focused on the damage in New Orleans, but the Mississippi and the Alabama coast also received damage. The upper sign on the Grand Mariner marina wall in Mobile shows where the water level got to during Katrina. There was pretty extensive damage around the waterfront areas of Mobile with a storm surge of over 16 ft and 67 MPH winds.

The lower sign shows the water level from Hurricane George in 1998. (You can enlarge any picture on the blog by clicking on it.)

We rented a car to see the sights in Mobile. One day was for grocery and Christmas gift shopping. The next day we toured the tourist sites downtown. First was Fort Conde, a 4/5 scale reproduction of a 1720 's French fort on this site downtown. The picture shows a model of the original fort.

Next we toured the Conde-Charlotte Museum House. This house which was originally built as a jail was later converted into a residence in 1854. It now has been preserved and functions as a museum furnished with period antiques that depict Mobile's history under five flags: French, English, Spanish, Confederate, and American.

This bed shows just some of the beautiful pieces in the house.

You know that you are in a real barbecue place when you can see the coals. The Dreamland Barbecue restaurant does their cooking in an inside cooker that you can walk right up and see the ribs on the grill.

After lunch we went back downtown to the Museum of Mobile. Inside were pictures and displays showing the history of Mobile and important features. Of architectural significance was the use of iron decorations, particularly wrought iron fences.

This view down on of the business main streets shows the typical balconies over the sidewalk with iron balconies.

Examples of houses.

Mobile has a free downtown trolley called MODA that does a circuit of downtown. Along with old buildings we saw a green square downtown decorated for Christmas.

We had rented a car for two days which had to be returned on Saturday. I decided to take in one more historical site so I drove south to Dauphin Island to see Fort Gaines. This fort was on the SW side of the inlet from the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile Bay. During the Civil War the fort protected the bay from Union ships until Admiral Farragut brought his blockading fleet through the inlet and into Mobile Bay to attack the defending Confederate ships. At the same time Union Infantry attacked this fort from the land side.

This is the view from Fort Gaines across the Mobile Bay inlet with Fort Morgan (seen as a small rise at the horizon) on the opposite island. The distance across is about 3 miles and a modern car ferry runs from near one fort to the other.

Of course, the thing that most of us remember about the battle of Mobile Bay is the quote attributed to Admiral David Farragut -"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!) History books I read recently indicated that what he may have said was approximately, first "Damn the torpedoes" and then slightly later to the Captain of his flagship "Four bells, Captain Drayton" which means go to full speed. What ever he said the quote left for history encapsulates Farragut battle philosophy, you are less exposed and in less danger if you charge ahead aggressively and take on the enemy. Audacity can be extremely effective in rattling and defeating the enemy.

The torpedoes Farragut was referring were also called those "infernal devices" and are today called mines. There were probably two types in use to protect the entrance to Mobile Bay. They were placed part way across the entrance leaving a small opening for Confederate craft to move in and out from Mobile. I was surprised to discover that during the Civil War 27 vessels were sunk by mines and 14 damaged.

On the road out to Fort Gaines the was a stretch of about a mile where houses used green marine channel markers apparently to mark their address. It was an unusual decoration.

On to Mobile! Dec 11 - Dec 16

From Columbus we immediately passed through the Stennis Lock and then the Bevill Lock. Mississippi and Alabama had been receiving heavy rain for much of the last week. The streams were full and raised the water level in the Tombigbee over 15 feet. Flow over the dams was high creating a fierce turbulence around the dams and high currents downstream. This picture of the Bevill Dam shows the turbulence.

Fortunately, the current was behind us heading south so we picked up additional speed and which should have shortened our time to Mobile if we had not hit fog later.

The white cliffs of Epes get even more dramatic the closer you are to them. At this point we are 25 miles above a point halfway down the Tombigbee Waterway to Mobile.

Our last lock on the rivers and our 159th lockage since we started in April was at the Coffeeville Lock. We had fog on the river for three days. The day before we had to delay our start by four hours and only made about 20 miles from one anchorage to another. This day was partially foggy all day.

This was our view as we prepared to come out of the Coffeeville lock. On days like this I use radar, our two chartplotters to watch for other boats and to keep on course. Also the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that I have tied into the chart plotting software on my laptop displays location, speed, direction, and boat name of any large boat (>100ft) or commercial vessel within about 3 - 4 miles. I am able to see a tow coming before it shows up on radar or am able to visually see it. This has been invaluable in the fog.

The finale set of bluffs along the waterway are these called Nanny Hubbert's Bluff.

The Black Warrior River is in the lower part of the waterway. The river level had exceeded its banks all the way from above Demopolis down to Mobile.

The first view of the city of Mobile is this bridge.

Mobile has a thriving shipbuilding industry. This ship, the USS Independence was constructed at the General Dynamic shipyard in Mobile. It is the second of a modern class of ships called Littoral Combat Ships or Freedom Class. The Independence LCS2 is of an Australian Austral company trimaran design and on Dec. 18 the Navy accepted delivery of this ship two days after this picture was taken. The design is a 417 foot long high-speed (over 40 knots) aluminum trimaran designed to be able to work close to shore or counter threats such as mines, quiet diesel engine subs, or fast surface craft. It has only a three meter draft but the helicopter deck of any US warship. The Navy wants a total of 55 LCS class ships.

Downtown Mobile

We tied up at the Grand Mariner Marina on Dog River on the south side of Mobile.

South To Columbus, MS Nov 23 - Dec 10

After returning to Decatur Alabama's Riverwalk Marina from our Seattle visit we kept our rental car for an additional day. We used the car to pick up a Christmas Honey Baked ham in Huntsville and tour the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. This huge museum is dedicated to the story of the development of rockets and the U.S. Space Program. Wernher von Braun and a team of ex-German scientists, brought to the US after WWII, were eventually brought to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville in 1950 where they and other US scientists developed most of the rockets and space vehicles used by the military and NASA over the next 20 years.

One of the crowning achievements of Von Braun's group was the Saturn V rocket that launched the moon missions. There is an actual Saturn V in a separate part of the museum and it is huge. You get some idea of the scale from this picture.

The Space and Rocket Center is also the home of the Space Camp that many youth attend every year.

We left Decatur on the 3rd heading west up the Tennessee River. On the second day we reached the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. This system uses three rivers and man-made canals to connect the Tennessee with the Gulf of Mexico. The first 234 miles is officially the Tenn-Tom Waterway with the last 217 miles the Black Warrior-Tombigbee. The whole Waterway was completed in 1985 and required moving more dirt that was moved to build the Panama Canal.

On the second day we reached the Tombigbee and turned south. The first marina right after the entrance to the Tombigbee is the Grand Harbor. One of their somewhat famous residents is the author of the river guidebooks series that we have been using for the last two months. Author Fred Myers keeps his 34' American Tug "Liberty Belle" at the Grand Harbor as shown in the left center of this photo. Fred's books on the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Tombigbee Waterway are indispensable guides for the waterways we have been traversing.

Parts of the waterway are man-made canals with a hill on one side and a high built up bank on the other. At various points where creeks or low areas empty into the Tenn-Tom the builders placed these attractive spillways on the sides of the waterway. I can only assume that their purpose is to break up and reduce the flow rate coming in from the side and also to aereate the water.

Whatever the purpose of these spillways they lend a certain artistic element to the banks of the waterway.

As we moved south anchorages were limited due to either the narrow waterway or shallowness of the few wide bays. This anchorage was just off the main channel near Aberdeen, MS. We had just gone up a long narrow winding channel to buy fuel at the Aberdeen Marina. The mile long channel never got below 6' deep but it was nerve racking winding around the mangrove trees following the private buoys marking the channel. The sunset view looks at a local park/recreation area right across from our anchorage.

On December 7 we reached the Columbus Marina where we were greeted by fellow American Tug 41 owners Dick and Nancy White. We had met the Whites at the 2008 American Tug Rendezvous and since we were both doing the Great Loop this year had kept in touch periodically. They are wintering in Columbus, MS. They had a car which they provided to us so we could shop for groceries, etc. We went with them to dinner and a presentation of the Messiah at a Catholic Church. The last day we toured Columbus which is the birthplace and early home of playwright Tennessee Williams whose home is pictured.

The Friendship Cemetery of Columbus was founded in 1849. An early ceremony honoring Civil War soldiers buried in Friendship Cemetery has been credited as the forerunner of the modern Memorial Day. More than 2,000 Confederate and Union soldiers are buried here. The Cemetery is also the burial place for veterans of every war starting with the Revolutionary War.

This weeping angel adorns the grave for the Reverend Thomas Teasdale. A resident of Columbus during the Civil War, he carried a note signed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to Union President Lincoln supporting a request for funds for an Orphan's Home for the State of Mississippi that primarily took care of children whose fathers were killed by the union army. Supposedly Lincoln signed on the same note directions to the local Union General over Mississippi to provide aid. This document is the only one signed by the presidents of both waring countries.

With the Whites we headed a few miles north to the small town of Aberdeen founded in 1837 on land acquired from the Chickasaw Indians. It became a social center for plantation owners who built many expensive homes and cottages there. The Tombigbee River provided a transportation link for cotton shipments to markets. This community of 6,000 still has a functioning downtown with several nice restaurants.

Aberdeen showcases its delightful historic architecture. They have the some of the best examples of the Antebellum, Victorian, and Turn of the Century periods that we have seen. Their Architectural Driving Tour brochure has to be the best in the U.S. The brochure leads you past 49 structures while describing them in great detail. The brochure shows examples of architectural features and explains the terms. The brochure was so good that I am keeping it with the book, Identifying American Architecture, that we bought way back in Alexandria, VA. The house pictured is one of the Victorian period homes on the tour.