Day 13 New Orleans to Gulfport, MS

    The weather reports looked much better this morning. By much better there is still the possibility of some rain but no thunderstorms, and the wind is supposed to be 7-9 mph out of the southeast. The wind velocity is paramount since we will be spending much of this trip out in the Mississippi Sound, which is pretty much open to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, it can and does get rough in the Sound, which we will be out in for much of the next two travel days until we get to Mobile Bay, which itself is large enough to get very rough with winds in the right direction. After Mobile Bay, we will be headed up the river system to Chicago, Illinois. In the river system our biggest concerns will mainly be flooding. I guess that there are always some unknowns....

     Lucky and I took one final "farewell" walk around the marina before our departure. This is the main building, which is pretty much elevated on stilts, except for the Laundromat, bathrooms/showers and several offices on the ground floor. We had dinner after we arrived on Day 8 and last night in the restaurant/bar on the second floor, which overlooks the small basin in the foreground.


     Our immediate neighbors in the marina were three "Floating Villas", which are shown in the photo at the right. These are now part of the rental pool, but I think that they were (or are?) originally for sale. They have lots of windows and nice decks, but they are at an angle to the dock such that their rectangular footprint takes up a lot of valuable space in a marina.


     The last photo from New Orleans shows Lucky Us all ready to depart for the 67.6 mile trip to Gulfport, MS. We got off at 9:20 am and headed back south to rejoin the GICW and head East. We had travelled abut a mile before we had to wait about 25 minutes before we could get an opening of the L&N railroad bridge. The bridge is at the end of a switch yard, and in order for a train to switch tracks in the yard they have to go onto the bridge until the last cars clear the switches so that they can then reverse back across the bridge. Not very efficient, but we just have to live with it...

     After clearing the bridge, the next 20 miles were in the GICW in a ditch cut into the swampy Mississippi River Delta. At least it is a very protected part of the trip. So protected in fact that it is difficult to judge the velocity of the wind... All indications were that the wind was higher than the predicted 7-9 mph, but the only way to find out for sure was to continue on until we got to the open Mississippi Sound. Well, you guessed it! The winds were more like 15+ mph, which is well within our "safe zone", but this means that we will spend the last 40 miles or so slogging through 2 to 2.5 foot waves with the occasional 3 footers. The good news was that we were headed more or less into the waves, which minimizes the rolling (side to side) motion of the boat. Unfortunately, Lucky did not fare too well in the rocking motion. The poor thing was sick several times, but she is a trooper and took it all in stride. After a while Terry took her down below to sleep on the dinette seats. Being lower and more in the middle of the boat does lower the motion (one of those length of the pendulum things that we all should have learned about in high school physics...).

     We arrived at the Gulfport Small Craft Harbor at 5:45 pm. In the last 6 miles we made several turns to line up with the ship channel, and this put us in a situation where the seas were more on our beam (side), which makes for an uncomfortable ride as we rolled from side to side. Lucky Us is not unique in my experience as most power boats seem to roll a lot in beam seas, but this is absolutely no consolation at the time. Initially, we had to dock at the fuel dock where the office is located and call for the night watchman to come and take our money, assign a slip, etc. The good news is that he did meet us at the slip and was a help in trying lines. The wind made the docking process less than ideal so having a knowledgeable extra pair of hands was actually a big help. As usual, Lucky was happy to get ashore and find some real grass...

     The final photo is across the marina with the separate commercial harbor in the background. There are three cable laying ships in port, and there is a large Dole terminal as well as a container terminal. In the final mile approaching the harbor the main channel splits into two channels with one going to the commercial port and the other into the small craft harbor so we are isolated from the wakes and noise from the big ships.

     Tomorrow we plan on a day of exploring the area on foot. The downtown area has more restaurants than when we were here last, and there is a great marine hardware store which will require some serious browsing. Also, after looking at various weather predictions, it looks like our initial plan to spend 2 nights here might need to be extended if we want to wait for the winds to subside. This is an excellent town in which to spend extra time. The town has a logical street pattern, and the downtown area is thriving with lots of restaurants and even casinos, which are all within walking distance. The movie theater and big box stores are further out but there is a bus system for that if needed. More will be revealed...