Ho hum! Guess what time we departed from Gulfport, Mississippi? Need a hint? The picture at the right shows yet another sunrise as we departed. As you can see, the sky was cloudless, and there is a very light breeze as can be seen from the small ripples on the water. The truth be told, we might have stayed longer in Biloxi, or Gulfport or both, but we had fairly open water crossings here. The longer term weather forecasts indicated that reaching New Orleans sooner rather than later would be in our best interests. So, here we are headed for New Orleans while the weather is still perfect...
Our trip today was 72.6 miles with about the first 40 miles in the Mississippi Sound, and the remainder in Lake Pontchartrain. After the first 40 miles we could have turned into the GICW and taken a more protected inland route to New Orleans, which is the way that we had come on the way east last year. However, we decided to go into Lake Pontchartrain instead. Our destination was the same marina that we had stayed at last year, which is on a canal between the lake and the GICW. We did have a number of bridges before the GICW turned off to head inland to New Orleans, including these highway and railroad bridges. All of the railroad bridges today were ones that remain open unless is train is crossing so that speeded things up a bit. This picture was taken about Noon, and you can see that the wind is still only a few mph.
You can tell that this railroad bridge is after the GICW has turned off since it is "open" but only about half way. A normal tow could not fit through that narrow opening. With a clearance of only 4 feet obviously we needed to maneuver around the bridge.
Lake Pontchartrain is tidal with a relatively narrow opening. The current here can be strong given the size of the lake. The chart showed depths of 51 feet, which was not a surprise. However, I took this picture of the chartplotter, which had a reading of 72.8. and to that number we can add 4 feet since the depth shown is from the keel down. However, the lake is generally shallow with depths often in the range of 11 to 15 feet. We did follow the marked navigation channel just in case.. That might seem shallow, but it would provide easy access to most pleasure craft.
We only had one bridge that required an opening to pass through between entering the lake and reaching the canal. That bridge worked very well with us to be able to pass through without having to wait. At this point we were maybe 10 miles from our destination. The Admiral does a great job of not only plotting the course, but she also checks aerial views of seemingly difficult places to maneuver, such as at locks, multiple bridges, etc. It was about at this time that I heard a rather loud "Oh no!!!".
In the picture above, Part A. is what the chartplotter showed. Lake Pontchartrain is just off the bottom. The white area is deeper water and the two brown lines are bridges. The railroad bridge has a clearance of 4 feet, but it is left up (open) when there are no trains due. The other bridge is a bascule bridge, but it has a clearance of 40 feet in the down position. Everything is a go, or so it seemed. Part B. When the Admiral checked the bridges on iMaps, she saw this picture which shows the channel completely blocked by a man made dike. Whoa! If this view is accurate, then we have to go back around for a distance of about 48 miles... Skip to Part D, which is the next view that she found on Google Maps, and this view agrees with the navigation chart. After a nervous call to the marina, they confirmed that there had been a temporary earthen dike, but it was now gone. The temporary dike was built so that new flood gates could be built across the channel. Panic over! Part C. shows are view after we had passed through the two bridges. At this point we are about 1/4 mile from the marina (and not 48 miles!). I am sure that some day we will see the humor in seeing the old outdated aerial view on line. All kinds of lessons learned and/or confirmed in this little "exercise"...
We docked with no further problems and had a nice dinner in the marina restaurant. We debated going back later for a visit to the hot tub, but after a long day that debate did not last long.
Tomorrow, we will take the marina shuttle bus to "The Big Easy" for some good old fashioned fun.
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