Day 19 Dog River Marina and up the Tombigbee River

     Today we head up the Mobile Ship Channel pass Mobile, Alabama. We got underway at 6:25 am, but three other boats also headed up the Tombigbee River beat us away from the dock by a half hour. They were going to be going much faster so we would have fallen behind quickly anyway. The winds have remained in the 8-10 mph range so we had a very leisurely trip to Mobile.



 
      There we entered the Tombigbee River, and from here we will be in the river system until Chicago, IL about a thousand miles away. Mobile is a pretty town, but when you drive through here on I-10 you do not see much of the city or its busy port. This is especially true since the Interstate goes through a tunnel under the river. The photo is as we are about to enter the Port of Mobile at the head of Mobile Bay and extending up the Tombigbee River.

     The activities in the port are many, including a cruise ship terminal. This terminal has the distinctive shape of a passenger ship. You can see some of the downtown skyline in the immediate background of the port. Pretty neat looking!

     The rest of the post for today is going to be more like LIFE magazine was with lots of pictures and not a lot of text... The reason for a lot of the pictures is Grandson Will (age 6) who likes these kinds of pictures.

     The photo at the left shows the sub sea pipeline laying ship Deep Blue in a floating dry dock. We also had seen 3 of this type of ship in the commercial port at Gulfport, MS, but we never got a clear view of them.

     The Bright Horizon is a heavy lift freighter that is also in a floating dry dock. You can see the bulbous bow sticking out that would normally be below the waterline.

     We also saw at least four ships in various stages of construction, such as the huge work boat (?) in the photo at left.

     The last photo of new construction shows two new littoral combat ships being completed for the US Navy. This type of ship is the latest design with a very low profile on radar as you can probably tell from the very smooth, angled exterior of the ship.

     So far all of the photos of the port have been of shipyard activity, but Mobile is also a busy commercial port. The port seems to be the home to several very heavy lift crane ships (self-propelled barges?) that are used to assemble oilfield production platforms on site. The various parts of the platform are built on shore and slid onto barges and transported to the site. These cranes them lift the components, which may cost a billion dollars or more, into place on the platform.

     There are also several container terminals in the port. This one happens to be empty at the moment, but this enables you to see the whole unloading system. Once a ship is in place the booms are lowered into the horizontal position to load/unload the containers. 

     The heavy lift cargo ship Grand Concord is shown in the photo at the left. She is very high in the water and her cranes seem to be in the stored position, which may mean that she has finished the process of unloading her cargo.

     After passing through the port area, we spent a few miles going through a very swampy area that may be part of the delta that formed where the Tombigbee River flowed into the mead of Mobile Bay. The only sight of "civilization in this area was a railroad track that was along the west bank of the river for part of the way. This area is probably flooded often by either the river or storm surge up Mobile Bay. Not a very pleasant place to be...

     We reached our anchorage for the night in the very late afternoon. We are in an old, largely unused channel of the Alabama River that comes into the Tombigbee River. The main present day channel of the Alabama River is several miles down river. There is just enough flow in this old channel to keep the boat straight in the channel with only an anchor from the bow. The Tombigbee River is up as much as 8 feet above its normal level due to flood waters from upstream. You can see (photo at left) the branches of shrubs and trees sticking up out of the water.

      There are a few places where the stream bank is just barely above water. The current in the main channel has been about 3 to 4 mph, which is then the speed at which the flood waters move downstream. As you can see, both Lucky and the Admiral are wearing their life jackets. Poor Lucky! This is her first ever ride in a kayak! She is having a lot of "firsts" on this trip, but in this case, her reward for sitting very still will be some ground with hopefully grass where she can do her business...



     While the intrepid kayakers were off seeking high ground, I found a nice comfortable place to wait for their return... We were actually running the generator with the air conditioning turned on, but this was both comfortable and very scenic.

     While this was happening, the Admiral had set up a whole chicken to roast on the rotisserie so we ate well for dinner. Fortunately we were still close enough to Mobile to get their TV channels live over the air. The old channel of the Alabama River was barely over 150 feet wide so the trees on shore blocked the view for the satellite dish. Life on a boat sure can be tough. ha, ha

     Well, it has been a long day and sleep is going to come early. It has cooled off enough that we no longer need the AC so it will be much quieter all night.