Voyages of Annie…The Great American Whistle Hunt, October 30

Good morning from Dog River, Alabama

Not really sure if Dog River is a town or just a River. Got in here yesterday after taking another beating on Mississippi Sound and another flogging coming up Mobile Bay. Not sure why they call this pleasure boating??? My last installment was from Biloxi. Since then I have had no wireless internet. After leaving Biloxi I was back out on Mississippi Sound .The weather has been relatively nice but windy. Temps have been in the 60’s and 70’s but the wind has remained out of the ENE at 20 + mph. Mississippi sound if fairly shallow …rarely being over 10 feet deep and as a result she throws up pretty steep chop when the wind blows. Not exactly great boating weather. There have been small craft advisories in effect daily.

I stayed in Biloxi for only a day. There was a great anchorage but otherwise nothing to do. Nearest marine store was 10 miles away. Nothing but hotels and casinos lined the shore. The only thing of interest was the Maritime Museum had two replica schooners at their docks that went out on day charters. Unfortunately the museum was destroyed by Katrina. After leaving Biloxi I headed east . Navigation is pretty straight forward. There are some shoals to watch out for but I decided to stay in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) which is still open water but marked with buoys and daymarks. The wind was on my nose and while Annie is pretty comfortable in calm water she has a lot of buoyancy forward so she tends to ride over the waves rather than cutting through them. As a result she pounds with the wind on her nose and rolls if the wind is on the beam and throws lots of spray. She ships water over the forward lower deck when there is any chop.. This isn’t a major problem except that you go forward while underway you will get drenched.

When I left Biloxi I was out in the weather for 6 hours and I said enough was enough. My best shot was head up to Bayou La Batre, Alabama where I had been twenty years ago in Moonshine on our first cruise. Must have been 6 or 7 miles up the channel from the ICW to Bayou La Batre. Luckily I picked up a shrimper headed into the channel and stayed off his quarter for about 5 miles. His wake broke some of the swell. Once I got into the bayou It was a relief to be in flat water again. Bayou La Batre sort of reminds me of Kemah the way Kemah used to be….a narrow channel with shrimp boats packed two and three deep. Everywhere there were still remnants of Hurricane Atria . There were remains of building blown over and boats sunk everywhere and half the docks were collapsed. . There was an old shrimper laying on its side across the bayou from where I tied up. Sort of expected Forrest Gump to come putting by any minute. Got into Bayou La Batre Saturday afternoon. Tied up on an abandoned dock of which there are a lot of since Katrina. Dropped the bicycle on the dock and went exploring. Unfortunately there was not much to explore by land so decided to do it by dinghy. Put the inflatable in the water and spent a few hours putting down the bayous and branches looking at boats and the remnants of the storm..

My plan was to wait till Monday morning and go to the marine supply house/hardware store in Bayou La Batre and get a chart of Mobile bay as I did not have one. Could not believe that in a fishing town that I could not find a chart but nada…zippo..not a chart in sight.. So I decided to go without one. Since I had no wireless internet connection I could not pull one up online. I left Bayou La Batre around 9 AM yesterday and headed back to the sound where the winds and seas were about the same as I had left them. 20 kts and 3-4 foot seas. Not really a big deal but just had to stay at the helm. Leaving the wheel for mote than 30 seconds was out of the question.

Had some minor problems getting into Dog River in that I found some spoil banks that were not evident. I was going to run straight up the western shore of Mobile Bay but found some shallow spots and didn’t know how to get through them without a chart so ended up backtracking and going out to the Mobile ship channel to find my way north. I could have probably pulled up a chart on the computer but I couldn’t leave the wheel for that long. Couldn’t risk getting into trouble with the boat out thereby myself with the wind howling. With this north wind blowing for the last week it has blown a fair amount of the water out of Mobile Bay so tides are two feet below normal and I was dragging bottom getting in the channel yesterday. Once inside the bridge I found a fuel dock and tied up. Again it was nice to be in flat water. I took on diesel and water. Spent an hour washing the boat down to get the salt residue off. Did some routine maintenance on the boat while I was still at the dock. Checked the batteries as I had noticed they had been not holding the charge like they should. I discover that two of the batteries are the ones that I put on the boat when I first fired up the electrical system 6 years ago. No wonder they are tired. Called Carol and she is going to bring 4 new batteries when she comes. She will be leaving home in the morning to drive to Alabama. She will meet me here at Dog River and we will leave the car here. We will have to find a way to get back here and pick up the car sometime later. Will probably have to take a bus back to Mobile and then a taxi down here to collect the car. Meanwhile she is running around picking up stuff for the boat. I emailed her lists of thing to bring. Besides she is trying to take care or her mother and find someone to take care of the donkeys while we are gone, in addition to paying bills etc. We are waiting on a circuit breaker for the main electrical panel on the boat to arrive UPS. Hopefully it will come today and if it does, she will leave first thing in the morning for Alabama. She should be here tomorrow evening along with my friend John Moss who will go with us up the Mobile and Black Warrior River. Will be nice to have an extra set of hands for handling lines when going through the Locks on the waterway. Sure will be nice to have someone to talk to. This is the longest Carol and I have been away from each other. Sure do miss her.

Tomorrow I will probably do more maintenance on the boat and just do some general cleaning getting ready for my crew to arrive… plus getting ready to head north on the waterway. I changed the oil in both main engines in Bayou La Batre and both gen sets are up and running fine so there is nothing major to do. But there is a plethora of little things that need to be tended to. I have a maintenance log and whenever I see something that needs to be done I make a note and then check it off when completed. I am not sure what cellular coverage will be like on the Black Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers. It may be sparse. Not sure when my next installment will be.

I have discovered three more scrumptious ways to prepare Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage biscuits…unfortunately they still taste like cardboard with Crisco on them.

Ron Beberniss aboard Annie in Dog River, Alabama.