Day 14-17 One rest day turns into 4...

    After a tiring trip to Gulfport, MS from New Orleans, we had decided to take a day of rest in Gulfport. Well, the strong ESE winds of 18 to 20 mph kept up so we have been forced to delay our departure for 3 days so far. Gulfport is a really good "walking" town with all kinds of amenities within 2 miles of the boat. Lucky has enjoyed lots of long walks... My Fit Bit has measured from 5 to just over 8 miles per day. On many of the walks we did a half mile of beach walking, but it was not a great deal of fun for me when we were exposed to the full brunt of the wind. Try as I might, I could not trick Lucky into getting hit by a wave... We are less that a mile from the old downtown, which was hard hit during hurricane Katrina in 2005, but has come back nicely with 15+ restaurants with half or more open for dinner. There is also some fun shopping, including Ken's Hardware and Marine Supply. The name is really a misnomer as it is mainly a marine hardware and supply store. It was a fun place to browse, and of course, we did walk out with a medium sized box of goodies.

     We are staying at the Gulfport Small Boat Harbor, which was also the host for the second and final weekend of a boat show. Most of the boats were of the trailerable variety and were displayed on land. However, there were also a number of larger boats displayed in the water. The trailerable boats ranged from kayaks and jet skis up to 43.5 feet with four 300 hp outboards. The "Mad Trax" pictured at the right seemed to have only been on display, but it would make quite an off-road, swamp vehicle with the machine guns... Well, we are in Mississippi...


     We took a look at a new 30 foot trailerable "trawler" that was part of the in the water display. We are thinking that we will probably down size our boat in a "couple" of years. We had the time and opportunity to give this one an in depth look, and now we have the start of a data base for some future decision. Our present boat is large enough that there are very few compromises due to size of space available. Going from a fully equipped galley with an oven, three burner stove, 12 cubic foot double door fridge, double sink, etc. to a 4 cubic foot fridge, a one burner cooktop that is intregrated into the stainless steel, single sink... The list of compromises goes on, but with a smaller boat we would be doing more weekend cruising than 355 day long trips around the Great Loop.

   We ate out once a day, and in the process we found a really good Mexican restaurant. The population is changing, and as we get further east and/or north, good Mexican food gets much harder to find. It was so good that we went back again today.

     We also went to a matinee show  on Sunday at the Gulfport Little Theater. They performed "The Producers", which is a musical comedy by Mel Brooks. The quality of the acting and singing was excellent! It was easily the best production that we have seen in quite a few years. On our first Loop we went to at least 10 different local theaters, which are always fun, but Gulfport easily topped that list.

     It certainly did not hurt that they had a real, purpose built theater with excellent acoustics and a large, knowledgeable audience. Anyhow Terry and I were very happy and it shows (photo at left).