" When Pigs Fly"

It’s been a long, expensive and frustrating month.  We finally got away from Columbus but the engines weren’t syncing up very well and the starboard engine was running too fast at idle. I wasn’t entirely comfortable but decided to head down river and see how things went.  Anything to get off the docks at Columbus.  They were a great group of people but I had been there for 5 weeks. I was starting to name the ducks around the slip so it was time to go. I’ll sure miss Quack and Paddler.      

You can see just about anything on a river bank!

The engines never did settle down but with a little finesse we made it to Mobile in five days, spending three great nights on anchor. The stars were incredible each evening and though it got pretty chilly, we enjoyed the quiet of the river.

There was a little excitement the last night we spent on the hook. We were both tired. It had been a long day of boating and another one was facing us the next day at first light if we wanted to make Mobile as planned, so we decided to retire early. We had anchored about 800 yards ahead of a spot where several tows were building a string of barges, but with two anchor alarms set just in case we slipped, we went to bed feeing safe. 

Anna got up around 5:00am and opened the shade in the salon.  She was startled to see a well lit up barge just a couple hundred feet behind us.  She was sure the anchor had slipped in the night and we were into the tows. I got up and into my pants fast like a fireman. Now, I wanted up at first light I just didn’t know it would be a spot light.

There it was, a huge barge right off our starboard stern at what first looked to be about 50 yards rolling its twin high beam spot lights. It was scary, but I was trying to be calm. I checked both alarms and our lat/long was the same as when we went to bed. So I took a closer look and realized the barge right outside the window was an up bound barge that had slipped into the shore to spend the night.  The original barges were still 800 feet or so off the stern.

I must say, in Anna’s defense, unless you’ve seen the spot lights on a barge you can’t imagine how blinding these lights are. The beam is at least 30”-36” in diameter and they can turn the darkest shore line into day light. Needless to say with the extra shot of morning collision adrenalin neither of us went back to bed. We just loaded up on coffee and moved south at first light.

The morning fog was about 3 feet thick floating about a foot off the surface of the river, the river was like glass, and it was way too early for the river current to be awake. When the river is like this the shore and the water edge blend into one and it’s extremely difficult to distinguish the separation. The rest of the day was pretty blasé until we entered the Mobile River. Our charts just kind of quit, but the river was wide, at least 400 yards, so we just stayed in the middle and pressed on.  We could see the sky line of the city ahead and the awesome suspension bridge that marked our final exodus from the Tenn-Tom River.

The Admiral and I were both excited to see Mobile bay the afternoon of 11/21/12. As we cleared the Mobile River and entered the harbor there were work boats going every which way in controlled chaos. The bay lies just past the harbor with open water as far as you can see. There is land on each side as you’re going south but it’s so far away it just barely a sliver.

The bridge entering Mobile Harbor and Bay

Working harbor, cranes everywhere!

See all those little channel markers out there?  Red to the left, green to the right.

Fishing boat ending his day.  Lots of winged company!

I had radioed ahead to Dog River Marina to let them know I wanted a mechanic to look at the engines.  I wanted to get the RPMs for the starboard engine a little lower at idle and also wanted to see what we could do to get the two engines to sync a little better.  They were very responsive and said they’d be waiting for us but also let us know mechanic services wouldn’t be available over Thanksgiving weekend. 

We traveled the 11 miles down the ship channel, found our “green 65” marker and turned into the secondary channel which would lead us to “DRM”. In the channel we met another boat coming out the channel and we slowed for the head on pass. Then as I re-powered up, the right engine stopped just like we turned off the key and it would make no effort to restart. Being about 3 miles out I notified the marina that we were on one engine. So this is how we coasted into Mobile, on one engine and a prayer.

The folks at Dog Harbor were there to help us tie up and we had a quick conversation about the engines.  We made arrangements to use the courtesy car on Thursday to find some Thanksgiving dinner and planned to wait out the weekend to spend some more quality time with boat mechanics. 

Since we knew ahead of time we’d be spending at least the long weekend in Mobile we had arranged for a rental car.  The gulf coast is a beautiful area with lots of great places within driving distance.  Over the next few days we explored Mobile a little and drove the coast line east and west.  We spent our next few days eating seafood in Mobile, New Orleans and Gulf Shores.

Life is still good. We aren’t crazy about the lost days this week and are hoping the mechanic in the bilge as we type will have us up and running before the end of the day. As we look back on it though, it could have been worse, it could have always been worse.  So, the boating adventure continues…

See ya on the water