West to Ingram Bayou

We were up early Tuesday morning, and started getting ready to begin our trip home. The weather forecast was for light winds on Wednesday, so that is when we want to cross Mobile Bay. No repeats of our trip across last time, please.

It was a beautiful day, a little breezy, but not bad at all. After a quick trip to the beach for Duke, we cranked up the engines. We had the anchor up by 8:30 am and were on our way. It was only 37 miles to our next stop at Ingram Bayou. We were in no hurry (good thing in a trawler) so pulled the throttles back and just cruised at 6 knots. This is the first day of this trip that we have been able to run the boat from up on the flying bridge. It has either been too chilly, or too windy. Today was near perfect and we were able to remain up there for the entire day.

As we were approaching the Pensacola Beach bridge I checked behind me for any overtaking boat traffic. I saw a big sport fishing boat approaching at high speed, throwing a huge wake. About that time I heard someone come on the radio and "thank" the boat for the wake. I was hoping to avoid getting waked by this guy, so called him on the radio. I offered to slow to idle so that he could get pass me at a slow speed. He replied that he already had it "taken care of" and was down to 1000 rpm. Well, I don't what kind of power he had in that thing, but when he blasted by at that rpm he was throwing about a 4' wake. I turned into as quickly as I could, but it still rocked us pretty good. It probably would have cost him all of five minutes to give us a slow pass. You just gotta love these guys... NOT!

We got across Pensacola Bay without any drama. Water was beautiful, as we had an incoming tide and all the clear, blue water from the Gulf was pouring into the bay. We had a dolphin escort for quite a while.

Dolphin Video

We had hoped to watch the Blue Angels practice on Wednesday, but had learned that all practice sessions for 2013 had been cancelled due to the budget sequestration. Who came up with that name anyway?? But, while traversing Big Lagoon, a pair of Blue Angels were doing some maneuvers overhead, so we got to see a few minutes of their performance, after all.

It was an easy ride to Ingram Bayou. Just before arriving Paula mentioned that no water would come out of the faucet. I checked the water pump to be sure it was running, and it was. Uh-oh, looks like we ran the water tank dry. Fortunately, Barber Marina was only 5 minutes away. I did not really want to take a slip for the night just so we could fill the water tank. Paula called them to ask if we could come in and fill our tank, and what would the charge be. No charge, they said. Hooray! It was a bit windy so we had some fun getting tied up to the dock. Paula did a commendable job of getting the lines around the cleats as I jockeyed the boat. In the end we had a full tank of water and headed back out to anchor in Ingram Bayou.

As we were getting anchored we noticed a boat from the marina that had followed us. One of the dock boys was in it, and was obviously waiting for us to get the anchor down. I thought that perhaps the marina had changed their mind about free water and sent him out to collect a fee.  But, he just dropped anchor a short distance away and sat in the bow texting on his phone.

When he got ready to leave he approached us, and commented on our boat. He asked what kind it was, and chit chatted. We had hoped to get rid of some trash while at the marina, but there were no trash bins nearby. So Paula asked the guy if he would mind taking our trash, and he agreed. I felt sorry for the poor kid, as she handed him over one of the bags from our trash compactor. It had over a weeks trash in it and must have weighed 50 lbs. Well, at least it seemed that heavy to me.

There was a stiff south wind when we entered the bayou, so we motored a good way back. But we still stayed in the main arm so we could get a good breeze back there. It was very nice all afternoon. But, once evening fell and the wind died, we were reminded of why this place is not good in calm winds. BUGS! Lots and lots of biting gnats! Almost invisible little buggers whose bite feels worse than the biggest mosquito. They just about ate me alive before I could get off the top deck and get the boat closed up. Thank goodness for generators and air conditioners!