Voyages of Annie, The Great American Whistle Hunt – October 26, 2007

Good evening from Biloxi, Mississippi

Finally got the generator problem corrected. Finished up about 6 last night. Seems like it was the “let’s start replacing parts till it works” approach but it is running OK. Ran it all day today and didn’t miss a beat.

Left New Orleans at 1 AM this morning. Put everything away on the boat , lashed all of the cabinets shut and put everything on the floor that might fall. Had a relatively uneventful trip…practically no wind at all. The monotony was periodically broken by bottle-nose dolphins playing in the wake of Annie and pelicans diving for dinner. Got into Biloxi mid afternoon and dropped the anchor. About half of the marinas and hotels are up and going and half are still in pile of rubble post Katrina. There’s construction all along the waterfront. There’s a barrier island just offshore called “Deer Island” that provides good protection from SE winds. Right now there is no wind and the sky’s clear. Beautiful sunset. Winds are supposed to pick up again tomorrow and the forcast for the next week is the same, 8-10 knots every day.

Been thinking about hauling up the anchor and making the passage to Dauphin Island tonight while the wind is calm. Don’t like doing unknown waters at night though so will wait till the AM and see what things look like. Besides I am tired from the passage here.

The Biloxi waterfront is mostly hotels and casinos I went ashore and I asked where the nearest chandlery was to get some charts of Mobile Bay and its about 10 miles away. I’m not into riding my bicycle that far so I will just hang out here.

Carol will be coming first part of the week. We are waiting on some parts to arrive for the boat and then she will drive over here or to wherever Annie is at. Maybe up on the Tombigbee River or Black Warrior River by then. There’s not much to do here without transportation so as soon as the weather permits I will head out. Was going to go topside and grill a steak for dinner but then the temptation hit me. Maybe I should try to come up with a new recipe for Jimmy Dean’s frozen breakfast biscuits.Yummy yummy!!!

Wishing I could do some whistle hunting. With all of the destruction from Katrina I suspect there are a lot of old buildings in shambles that might yield some interesting artifacts. Unfortunately, until we get on the rivers, the water is too shallow to get close enough to shore to see anything. If I stay around here I will get in the dinghy and go poking around the waterfront tomorrow.

Ron Beberniss aboard Annie in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Voyages of Annie, Wednesday, October 24

Good morning from Lake Ponchartrain.

Have been here since Friday. Robert and his wife jumped ship on Sunday and went back to Alexandria and will maybe rejoin somewhere down the line.So I am alone. The Westerbeke distributor is a block away and am trying to get the generator issue resolved. Ordered parts Monday and they came yesterday. Got them installed and it still won’t run.So we order more parts and they won’t be here till Thursday. Hopefully that will be the end of it. Weather has been really crappy. Rainy cold and wind has been howling. Wind is out of the north and I will have to wait for the wind to swing to the prevailing southeasterly direction before taking off. I will probably have to run to Biloxi by myself as I have not found anyone that can go with me. Everyone I have talked to has this terrible disease called a job. Had that disease once myself but got cured.

Its about 100 miles of open water between here and Biloxi. Navigation is pretty straight forward but I work about the weather, squalls etc.There are some shoals and a few wrecks but everything is well marked on the charts. Will watch the weather closely. Thursday is supposed to be a good day. I have made arrangements with he maritime museum there for dockage for a few days. I have been working on Annie for the last few days. Doing lots of little things that needed to be done. Too cold and wet to do anything outside. There’s not anything close by here except for a few marine stores that are reopening after Katrina. This area got hit pretty hard. Since there’s not much else to do I will probably get on the bike and go see what I can see.

Ron Beberniss on Annie Lake Ponchartrain, New Orleans, Louisiana

Oh yeah, there was another boat in front of mine…

Voyages of Annie Installment 3 and The Great American Whistle Hunt

Stephensville, Louisiana to approximately Mile Marker 55 on the Port Allen Canal.

This canal enters the Mississippi just south of Baton Rouge. The bayous we were on today are very beautiful far removed from civilization with clusters of small fishing camps and small communities… some very rustic and rural and some with very nice urban brick homes. Lots of interesting house boats. Some small some large and some were regular houses built on huge barges.

There must be more boats per capita in Louisiana than anywhere else in the world. Some of these small fishing camps have four and five boats pulled up in the back yard. Most of these houses here are just a few feet above the water level of the bayou but because of the levee system the bayous stay at a pretty constant level all year regulated by a a very complex system of locks and levees. The Atchafalaya River is on the other side of the levee and in the spring the water may rise significantly but the locks control the outflow into the low-lying surrounding areas maintaining a fairly constant level.

Wildlife is abundant. Saw a few eagles, cranes and egrets abound. Have seen a few alligators but according to Robert they are nocturnal and come out with the mosquitoes… that’s when I go inside… not because of the gators but the mosquitoes will carry you off.

Annie is performing admirably. No mechanical problems today in spite of an abundance of duck weed in the water. Have been running on one engine to conserve fuel. We alternate engines about every four hours but running both does not add significantly to the boat’s speed.

Had an interesting happening. Someone opened the pilot house door and a gust of wind blew the chart off the chart table and out the opposite door and into the water. We did a quick “all stop” and turned around and fished the slightly dampened chart out of the swamp with the boat hook. Robert, or Bayou Bob as we know him, says the chart is no good until it has been baptized with bayou water. We rolled paper towels out on the floor and laid the chart open on them and then rolled another layer of paper towels on top of that. Then I unloaded the book shelf and piles all my books on top. After an hour or so I pulled the still slightly damp chart out folded it up and put it on top of the port engine. In about an hour is was done cooking and very dry, crisp, and not too much worse for the experience.

Tomorrow we enter the Mississippi. It’s about 110 miles on the River to New Orleans and not much in the way of places to tie up or dock overnight. There are some islands and sand bars that we may be able to get behind for some protection from the commercial traffic. We have to plan to be in New Orleans at midday on Friday so we don’t want to have to go through the Industrial Locks at night. Robert and Delores are going to jump ship in Slidell, which is about 20 miles from New Orleans. I don’t have any crew after that as Carol is tied down in Houston for another ten days. Do I have any volunteers??? I may continue on by myself but would really like to have some company.

The Great American Whistle Hunt

Found my first steam whistle of the trip today.We were cranking down the Port Allen channel trying to find a place to anchor as it was getting late in the day and the barge traffic 24/7 and no place to get off the main channel. We were banging along and came across a little cluster of houses on the north bank. One of the houses had an old building behind it and I thought I caught a glimpse of a whistle through the trees and then I lost sight of it. Stopped the engines did a 180 on the canal and eased up to about 50 feet of the bank and with the binoculars I could see it. Not sure what it it was …maybe a 4″ Crosby or Lonergan PWOV. We had to keep on going however as it was getting close to dusk otherwise I wouold have dropped the hook and gone and knocked on the dor and inquired about it. But sometimes it not all about bringing it home… it’s about the hunt and at least I spotted it. I suspect there will be a lot of whistles along the water as we get father along. Especially getting closer to New Orleans.

Actually I found a couple of them the other day when I had to drive to Lafayette to pick up Robert at the bus station. It’s sugar cane harvesting time in Louisiana and there are a gazillion trucks full of sugar cane going down the highway. Cane trucks take cane to sugar mills. Sugar mills have steam which is produced by boilers. Plan… get behind a cane truck and let him lead me to the whistles. Bingo…8 inch Crosby chime and a 6 inch Sinker Davis gong on the Sugar mill. Unfortunately they were still being used but it was a nice little digression on the trip to Lafayette.

I added a couple of PDF files, from page one and page 14, from the newspaper in Morgan City, Louisiana.We were there a few hours and the local newspaper and TV crews showed up. Now sure how they found us. Must have been a slow news day. Anyway it was interesting.

Voyages of Annie, Installment #2

Still in Morgan City. No crew. Carol is home and Robert had to go home for a few days. Been tending to business. Got the swim platform /dingy dock finished and all of the hardware mounted. Works like a charm. We are docked at the city docks. Railroad bridge about 200 yards in back of us. Nostalgic to hear the trains going by all hours of the day and night. Put the dingy in the water yesterday and went exploring. Ran about 15 miles up one of the bayous. Pretty neat.

Met some people and they took me to Houma, La yesterday so I could buy a bike. We bought bikes to bring with us and at the last minute I decided to leave them home but here I need one. Nothing is close. Grocery store is a mile or so. Fortunately there are some great restaurants within a block or two of here so I am in no danger of starving.

The first day here the newspaper was here doing a story on Annie and we were on TV that night. Then the newspaper showed up not to be outdone by the TV folks. I think that must be in todays paper. Everyone loves the calliope.

Been tending to boat business. Have some things to fix and install. Going to scrub the bilge this AM and do some varnishing this afternoon. Weather is absolutely gorgeous. …74 deg. Plan is to refuel Monday and head out probably Tuesday heading up the Atchafalaya River to the Red River. Don’t know how far north we will go. Will play it by ear.

RB

The voyages of Annie Installment 1… Seabrook, Texas to Morgan City, Louisiana

Good morning from Morgan City, Louisiana, 300 plus miles from Seabrook.

We have been out of touch with the world for three days as we have had no cellular service and hence no internet . We got into Morgan City Louisiana last night and are docked at the City Docks and are finally in cell phone range.

So far the trip from Seabrook has been relatively uneventful with the exception that we lost the big generator. Seems to be some electronic control issue and I am working on it. I have done everything that I can do to try to bypass the electronic controls but there is only so much that I can do. I suspect the problem is in a molded electronic governor control but am not sure. I am going to call my generator people in Houston this morning and see what they say. Morgan City is a big port and there are lots of offshore crew boats and lots of shrimping vessels here so I am hoping there is a Westerbeke dealer here.

Meanwhile we have been getting by with the little generator. It will only run one air conditioner at a time so during the daytime we run the AC in the pilot house and at night time we run the AC in the sleeping cabins. We can only run one big item at a time so if we need to run the washer dryer or cook with the stove top or oven we have to shut down the AC.

The Intracoastal waterway is a long mostly manmade cut through coastal marshlands. There were virtually no pleasure boats that we saw between here and Seabrook aside from a few small fishing boats. . Most of the traffic is barge traffic.West bound we met on the average of two to three pushboats per hour pushing any number of barges. Eastbound we would overtake and pass a tow on the average of every two hours. We were making slightly better time than they were but in order to pass we started both engines and pushed up the speed till we were clear. .

Wildlife is abundant particularly mosquitoes. Lots of birds and saw two alligators. Suspect the gators will be much more common once we get out of the ICW into the swamps. First night we anchored up in a cut off the ICW near Port Arthur and the second night we spent up on the Mermantau River. Went further up the Mermantau River Sunday morning to a little town of Lake Arthur. Quaint little town with old houses and lots of history. They have incredible oak trees there…. some of the neatest trees I have every seen. I am in the process of building a tree house at Rancho Bebo and the trees at Lake Arthur tickle my imagination. . Third night we anchored in a little cut somewhere along the south bank of ICW. The barge traffic is 24/7 .’We don’t like running at night so we try to find a protected spot off the ICW out of the way of barge traffic and wakes from the barges as they pass.

On the average we are making about 7-8 knots which is about 9-10 mph. We have been running mostly on one engine. We found that with both engines we could do 8 knots and with one engine we could do 7 knots. We were willing to sacrifice the additional 1-2 mph to cut our fuel consumption in half.

And the latest news bulletin is in: the generator is going. I have been talking to technicians all over the country today and got a feeling for what goes on inside the “black boxes”. Decided to have one last go at it and checked a few strategic voltages on the control boards and checked a few connections and fired it up and bingo she sputtered a little and then took off. Loaded her up and she seems to be running fine carrying all on the air conditioning. Hallelujah!!!!

I am losing crew tomorrow. Carol is going back to Houston and Robert is heading home to Pineville to take care of business. He calls it “rat killing”. So when he gets his rat killin’ done he’ll come back to the boat and we can head on up the Atchafalaya River. So I am here for a week. Have a few boat projects to do….. routine maintenance and stuff and then there’s the never ending varnish to do. More later when we head up the Atchafalaya River.

The crew of Annie

Ron and Carol Beberniss and Robert Mayeaux

Hello world!

Welcome to Travels with Annie, a boat my wife and I built over the years for when we retired. Well, we retired and we are set to travel… care to join us on our journey of the Intracoastal Waterway? We’ll be posting from time to time and giving you our ports of call, so drop by and leave us a note.