Day 7 Morgan City to Houma, LA

     We left the dock this morning at 7:55 am. Today we will be traveling 38.4 miles to Houma, LA. If our speed remains constant, the chart plotter calculation has us arriving around 1:30 pm this afternoon, although this calculation is continually changing as even without locks, bridges, etc. our speed is continuously changing with winds and tides as well as bends in the GICW. After we left the dock and headed South back to the GICW, we passed under a railroad lift bridge that remains open, except for approaching trains. The bridge only has a posted clearance of 4 feet so it would have to open for any but the smallest boats if it did not remain open.

     In a short distance we re-entered the waterway and headed East once more. Surprise, surprise! Almost immediately we encountered a lock that the Admiral missed on the chart.  Fortunately they had us float right in, and once again we got to practice our station keeping, which is nautical for "hanging out" as we waited for the gate to close behind us and then open in front. That's about as good as a lock through can be, but even then it added about 15 minutes to the calculated arrival time on the chart plotter.
   The first several miles of the waterway were filled with marine (and petroleum) related industries. I have included just a few pictures to give you a feel for the types of activities that we passed. One shipyard appeared to be putting the finishing touches on a new ferry named Woods Hole. So, it will undoubtedly be heading up to New England for a run from Woods Hole, MA to places like Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.





     We passed quite a few other shipyards, including this one with at least 6 floating dry docks. Some of them were in use, but as a sign of the times, the activity in a lot of the shipyards appeared to be minimal.







     This shipyard was a definite exception. They were in various stages of completing the construction of these new ships. There was a crew/work boat near completion on the left with one under construction on land . Going further to the right is a (very dark) tow boat and on the far right is a drill ship being finished at the dock.




     We also passed another shipyard that was building a seemingly large number of small drilling platforms. These will ultimately be lifted onto barges and towed to their destination where a large crane barge will lift it off and place it on the shallow bottom.



     The "last" picture of a sign of the times is one of many yards with a number of crew/work boats sitting idle. Many of them did seem to have been recently painted, which may be in anticipation of better days ahead...










     Once we cleared the Morgan City area, we spent most of the rest of today's trip in the swampy Louisiana coastal plain. The vegetation does seem to be changing slowly as we get further East. I felt that this scene along the side of the waterway has a remarkable southern feeling to it. The Spanish moss hanging from the Cypress trees that have their "knees sticking out of the water.






    We arrived at the Houma City Marina around 1 pm and are docked with four other boats from our home neighborhood (Clearlake area in Texas).  One is beginning the loop, two are traveling with the Looper to Florida, and the fourth just happened to be here too, like us. There was a problem with the electric panel on our power post, but the electricians from the city arrived a few minutes later and fixed the problem. They stayed to work on some other electrical issues since 4 more boats were due to arrive later. The marina has 6 slips of varying length plus a mooring wall about 100 yards long. If all of the boats actually make it here, this will be the most boats ever at this marina... The marina is basically a long skinny canal between two fixed highway bridges over the waterway here. The other bridge is just out of view on the left. The area around the actual marina is a grassy city park with picnic tables, walkways and nice landscaping. It would be an extremely nice location except for the traffic noise, which Lucky found most disturbing... She enjoyed walks around the grassy areas, but she did not want to get close to being under the source of the noise.

     We joined the other boat couples for "Docktails" at 5:30 pm. We took our folding chairs and put a bag of popcorn in a bowl and joined them for a lovely time until after 7:00 pm in perfect (bug free) weather. In the middle of this event another boat came in to dock for the night, and those folks soon joined us. Then it was back to Lucky Us for a dinner of spaghetti with a side salad. Sleep came early...