Day 9 onward to near Morgan City, LA

     Sadly we departed Delcambre, LA at 10:30 this morning and resumed our trek East. Last night I moved all of the fuel from the two port tanks to the two starboard tanks, which more or less filled them up... This meant that we had nearly 300 gallons of fuel or nearly 2400 pounds on the starboard side.  We slept last night with a few degrees of list (or tilt) to starboard.  Before heading out we went to the local fuel dock and put 255 gallons of diesel fuel at $3.19 per gallon.  Marine diesel is not subject to the highway taxes and is colored pink like farm diesel to indicate this.  Most marinas are low volume so the fuel is still more expensive, but in a shrimping port, the volume is high and prices are lower so we filled up! Anyway, this removed the starboard list on the boat as well as saving up to $1.50/gallon. 
     We also started late as a cold front was supposee to finish passing through by mid morning...  Not so!  We got about an hour out, and a rain storm built up on the back side (want to guess where we were?). The rain was hard at times, but the visibility was never less than 1/2 mile.  By mid afternoon the Sun was starting to peak through. 
     We passed a cable ferry that was fun to watch. There were big wheels/pulleys to move the ferry.  There were dire warnings to not pass the ferry until it reached the other side and allowed the cables to settle to the bottom.

It really scooted across the channel, but I suppose it will sadly be replaced by a bridge some day far too soon. A little further along we passed a barge oil rig that was being set up to drill.  They had dredged (or dug) out a small area for the barge so that it was outside of the waterway, but yet the drill rig could be easily serviced by barges.

Note the sky... Black clouds to the left (or East), which was the direction that we were headed. We anchored for the night 12.75 miles West of Morgan City, LA. The marinas in Morgan City are closed as the dike that protects the city from floods has its flood gates closed due to some flooding. Thus, we will pass through the city tomorrow, but we cannot stop.

     We are anchored for the night in an "artificial" oxbow lake created when they straightened and widened the Wax Lake (drainage) channel. The current in the main channel is very strong, and on the map there is a small delta formed where this channel flows into the Gulf of Mexico.  The oxbow/old channel where we are anchored is 16 feet deep but less than 100 feet wide.  We had to put out over 100 feet of anchor line so you do the math...  A strong cross wind, etc. could provide some problems if the boat decided to move around. The wind is supposed to be little to none so we should be okay.  Also, we will not need to run the generator for the air conditioning thanks to the cold front so it should be good sleeping tonight!

   ...and one final note (from the retired geology prof). After having visited Jefferson Island and Avery Islands (salt domes), today I got to go close by the remaining three Louisiana salt dome islands (Weeks, Cote Blanche and Belle Isle). It seems that the Intracoastal Waterway goes right by the last three.  In fact, much of the salt mined at all of them was (and still is) taken out by barge.