Thursday November 18: Dog River

Finally, back to a real city! Steve scouted out a place for breakfast so we walked around the old area of Mobile (lost the pics somehow) and through the original square It was really nice - very reminiscent of New Orleans with the two story buildings and balconies on the second floor. Like Bourbon St. Docking at the convention center gave us a mostly calm night even though Mobile River doesn't sleep - as was evidenced by the number of tows going by in the dark. They threw out quit the wave but Steve has become the master of the bumper arranging and we rode through the night quite well! Leaving Mobile shipping area was a real trip. Freighters leaving in front of us, coming toward us and mixed in on the edges were shrimp boats and some other small fishing boats. Waves were about a foot and a half. The bay is very shallow (lots of it less than 5 feet) so it can become very rough very fast. So if you have a 4 foot draft boat, a 5 foot bay and 3 foot waves - guess what happens!

It was nice to be at a marina again after 5 nights out and Steve was again up early taking pictures of the sunrise near the marina. We're on Dog River - about 12 miles south of Mobile and about 20 miles from the start of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway (GICW). It's really a pretty area - and no evidence of any oil - at least not this far up the bay.

The generator lives to run another day!!! The goal for today was to take the generator apart to see what we needed to fix it. It was a long process as we had no idea what we were doing - as is often the case! So we took lots of pictures, labeled all the parts and then tried to figure out what to do. It's amazing how much you can learn about how something operates when you take it apart! After talking about it, we decided to put it back together, use sealant on all of the fittings and cross our fingers. Oddly enough, it started, ran - and still leaked although not nearly as much. Next thing we know, the guy on the boat a couple of docks down came over because he recognized the sound of an old Onan MJDE generator! Turns out he worked on and repaired them! He actually crawled down and showed us how to gently tighten the fitting that was still leaking. What a nice guy!! Anyway, he assured us the Onan is a just plain noisy thing - always was even from day 1. So it was comforting to know that it's not just ours. A few things to tie up tomorrow and then it'll be off to Ohio and California for the Thanksgiving holidays.