90 DAYS

No, that is not what the judge said, that is the amount of time that it took to get to Grand Isle.

After getting the boat fixed in Demopolis, we set off for the last 400 miles. During that time the anchorages were mediocre and we had problems with the winter cold fronts setting in. Now a high of 63 may sound great to those of you who are up north some place, but when the lows were near freezing, you get up to frost on the deck, have a north wind blowing all day and the only heat on board is the oil lamp and a small propane heater (that didn't work for the first couple of cold days), it ain't all that great. The last couple of days getting down here I was layered for warmth; a t-shirt, a turtle neck, a denim shirt, a fleece vest, a heavy wool sweater, a hoodie, and my foul weather jacket. I felt like the Michelin man. And yes, I had my wool gloves on. We were cold.

One of the days dressed this way I looked in the mirror and discovered I looked like the Uni-bomber.

We did find a couple of nice places to anchor. One of them we stopped early (2PM) and got the dingy down and did some exploring in one of the "lakes" just off of the river. We did not see any gators but we did see a water moccasin when we entered the anchorage.

It was quite a pleasure to get out of the rivers and back into open water. Mobile was our first "salty" port. We still only got about a half hour of sailing due to bad wind direction and the fact that Mobile Bay is shallow and one must stay in the channel. We did see our first dolphin in Mobile Bay. We spent 3 days in Turners Marina in Dog River, 10 miles south of Mobile and got to see our surrogate grand kids who live in Gulfshores.



When we left Dog River we headed across Mississippi Sound towards New Orleans. We traveled 81 statute miles that day and anchored in 10 feet of water north of Cat Island. It was after sundown when we dropped the hook and it was dark by the time I was setting an anchor light. As I sat there in the dark I heard the unmistakable sound of a dolphin surfacing and snorting right next to the boat. To say the least it startled me. I was glad I knew what it was other wise I would have been more concerned about the mystery splashing around the boat.


That night was less than comfortable. The weather forecast was to be light and variable winds that night. That means very small waves; yeah right! The wind came up at about 1 AM. The boat was not in danger, but the rest of our night's sleep sure was. It was easy to get up at dawn the next morning and get moving as our destination that night was to be New Orleans. The best part of our evening in New Orleans was that we had electricity and thus we could get heat from our electric heater.

The next day we had to cross the Mississippi River again. To accomplish this one must lock up to the river level from the east bank through the Industrial Canal (one of the levee breaks during Katrina). After going through the lock we headed down river for 5 miles and then had to lock down to the Intercostal Waterway on the west bank. All in all the process went rather smoothly. We waited only 10 minutes at the Industrial Lock and only 2 hours at the Algiers lock. The reason it can take so long is that one must wait their turn and there are numerous tows trying to get through.

From there we headed to the Boomtown Casino, on the other side of New Orleans, for a free tie off and our first seafood. The food was good, but the happy hour prices no longer existed. Oysters were a buck a piece instead of 50 cents, crab cakes went up by a buck and drinks would have been cheaper just about anywhere, even the bars in Alaska!



The next day was our run down to Grand Isle across water that we have traveled before. It was cool and windy as we made our way down to Lafitte and the Baritaria waterway. These were waters that the pirate John Lafitte sailed. We did not see any pirates just some Saturday morning fishermen. As we got closer to Grand Isle, the dolphins welcomed us to our new winter home.

A quick summary of our trip:

• 2006 statute miles traveled
• 44 nights at a dock (Too many for me.)
• 34 nights at anchor
• 12 nights on the hard
• 23 locks
• Longest Day 82 miles (Twice)
• Days with the sails out 4
• Days sailing 1
• Fuel Cost--$525
• 15 mpg
• Dockage--$1400
• Total cost of trip including stepping the mast, repairs, maintenance, pumpouts/excluding food, dining, laundry, etc--$2800

Life in the Tree House

It is another weekend and here we still sit in Demopolis living on the hard, or as someone said living "in the tree house." It is kind of like that given we must climb the ladder to get on and off the boat. Yesterday morning was rather unnerving when I tried to get off the boat and noticed that the ladder had blown over. Here I am 10 feet in the air with the ladder on the ground. With the help of a dock hook, the ladder was retrieved.

The bent rudder has been repaired and the cutlass bearing has been replaced. The cutlass bearing is located in front of the propeller. It is necessary to keep the prop and shaft from just wobbling around in space behind the boat, one end of the shaft connects to the motor the other goes through the bearing to the prop. In the process of replacing the bearing the shaft had to be removed. Upon removal it was discovered that the shaft was too worn to be usable. A new bearing was not the complete answer, but a new shaft was.

That was on Tuesday. The old shaft was taken to the local machine shop to be copied. A new shaft was to be ready by lunch on Friday. Well, in Alabama lunch must be over at 3:00 because the shaft was not here in the yard until 3:30. After it was installed it was discovered that the shaft had not been cut properly and the prop would not fit properly over the end. The shaft is to be back in the shop on Monday. We will have to see when this is all finished!

Hopefully the whole project will be done by mid-day on Monday and we can be underway again. We are about 200 miles north of Mobile, 235 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. When we get down there we will head to the west and on to Grand Isle.

I spoke with our friend Andy on Grand Isle today and was told that our 5th wheel is all set up and waiting for us. It will be good to get there even if Andy and Sue are not there. Their plans are to take their boat to Key West for about a month. They should be back to Grand Ilse in mid December.

The only positive thing is that we were just able to watch Michigan play a great game against Minnesota, the Little Brown Jug stays in Ann Arbor. Next is the Alabama vs. LSU game. Geaux Tigers!!

That's all for now.

Rob

On the Hard Again

Today we are sitting at the Demopolis Yacht Basin in Alabama. Our boat went on the hard Thursday night for rudder repairs. For the landlubbers that means that the boat was taken out of the water and is on land for rudder repairs. I (Jude) was steering the boat as we were leaving the pumpout station and backed into a bank of clay. With the rudder turned to one side it hit the bank hard and then Danny's Fault lost steerage. To make a long story short. We were taken out of the water and found that the rudder post was bent and the cutlass bearing needed to be replaced (not related to the grounding but to all of the silt in the Mississippi and Illinois river). Hopefully we will be able to float the boat Wednesday or Thursday so we can continue our travels.



In this marina are a lot of boats (big and bigger) that are stored here for hurricane season. This marina is at the 32nd parallel that the insurance companies have proclaimed is above the hurricane zone.



We are now 216 miles from Mobile Bay and we can see some semblance of light at the end of the tunnel. From there it will be only 150 miles to Grand Isle (our destination). When we get to Mobile we hope to see our "surrogate" grandchildren. Courtney and Gabbie are children of Ron and Jessica Lillie who Amanda was a nanny for up in Alaska. Whenever we came into Anchorage we became known as their Alaskan Grandparents. They even met us at the airport one night!






We saw our first alligator about 150 miles upriver from here and our first palmetto 125 miles upriver from here. Lots and lots of Spanish moss. It feels like we are finally getting down south. Some of the river is very boring and some of it is very beautiful. Here is a picture of some of the white cliffs that we have gone past.


Our hope is to be in Grand Isle within a couple of weeks. Our friends Andy and Sue came up from GI yesterday to check out how we were doing. We had a great lunch at the marina pub and we got some information as to our final options as to course to Grand Isle.


Until the accident, we had been traveling with another sailboat out of Michigan. Dulcinea, sailed by Alice and Tom La Belle have been our traveling companions since leaving Kentucky Lake. Their luck has been worse than ours. Aground 3 times, but worse than that, they had to put their 14 year old dog down. Sad day for them. Sometimes being traveling companions means other commitments. Tom's water intake got clogged with some of the vegetation that floats in the river down here. While he worked on the cooling system, we dragged him along behind. All was fixed within a half hour. Since our problems will keep us here a while they have moved on. Oh yes, it was cold that morning. We had frost on the decks two mornings. The temps those two days started in the lower 30s and made it all the way up to about 60. We do not have heat on the boat, but we do have a propane oven. We had a casserole one night and Jude's famous home made pizza the second night.


Jude and Rob