Memsahib's Voyage

We made it across the Gulf from Apalachicola Bay to Tarpon Springs with nine other boats on Friday night.

Rough, long crossing and a big gulp (28 hours straight, 176 miles) in a boat with no autopilot.  But crew and boat behaved admirably.  Bilge pumps ran some at first until seams that hadn’t seen water since Lake Michigan started to swell.

Here’s my report on the crossing to Looper Weather Guru Tom Conrad:

Sparta and John on watch just after daylight.

If one of those bastards would jump just a little closer, I would catch it and kill it and eat it.

Hour 28, pulling into Tarpon Springs.  Rough enough going out through the pass into the Gulf that I fell off my Ikea bar stool/driving seat twice!

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We made two long hauls last week, Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach and Fort Walton to Panama City, but they were not too bad given the sand-and-shore scenery, beautiful homes on the waterway and, of course, the dolphins.  In almost every stretch of open water they come up to hitch a ride on the wake and look you over:  “Hey, is that boat made of WOOD?”  You just can’t get away from it.

After hours of trying to capture them with the camera, John finally made a video.

We stayed a couple rainy days at Fort Walton Beach Yacht Club — nice facility, good inexpensive food, and very friendly members.   Expected it would be dead in January, but there was a pretty lively bar scene of members who make me feel like a stripling knocking back the manhattans and old fashioneds.  Lots of interest in the boat and voyage, and I’d encourage any Loopers out there to make it a stop.

We are know at Bay Pointe Marina, part of the Wyndham resort at Panama City Beach.  Very fancy with a hotel and Jack Nicklaus golf course, but for the same $1 a foot as everywhere else, why not?

Panama City itself is this giant, interesting  contradiction:  beautiful beach homes and golf courses, upscale shopping, cheek by jowl with tacky, touristy junk and the barracks that house a quarter-million spring breakers every year.  In 2006 during the worst of the bubble the town fathers took the prohibition off high rises and to my way of thinking, just ruined large parts of the area.  These are almost all rental units and so overbuilt that most of them are empty most of the year.  (I get my information from the Enterprise rental car drivers, who generally have a very good take on what’s going on in the areas we’re passing through, and are a loquacious bunch.)

Had a great meal last night in one of those cheap strip-mall, formica-table joints that you dream of finding.  Dee’s Hangout was at the top of the Trip Advisor list, and it was fabulous — the best Creole/Cajon seafood outside New Orleans.  I am finding Trip Advisor and Urban Spoon pretty reliable and am going to start posting myself.

Driving to Easpoint tomorrow to get poor Sparta neutralized at the animal hospital.  Having a cat in heat on a small boat has not been fun.  She is up all night wailing for her husband Tom.

Friendly and inexpensive Fort Walton Yacht Club

Here’s what the water looks like AFTER the dolphin goes away — I have about a 100 of these pictures

You always wonder — “What does their REGULAR house look like if that’s just their beach house?”

Beach Houses, Fort Walton

Bay Pointe Marina — some big iron in here

Bay Point Marina — Mississippi had its charms, but this ain’t bad either

Ripley’s even tackier neighbor Wonder Works

A Ripley’s Believe It or Not puts a lot of points on the Tourist Tacky meter

This is what you see on Beach Road in Panama City Beach — not a grain of sand

Here’s how Panama City absorbs 250,000 spring breakers every year — build ’em big

Happy New Year from Pensacola, FLORIDA.  We are at last in the land of palm trees, beaches and dolphins swimming around the boat.  But try as we might to slow them down, Flipper and friends WOULD NOT stop swimming long enough for a picture.

We spent our last night in Alabama at Barber Marina in Orange Beach — a beautiful new facility with every amenity, but since it was finished right at the start of the Great Recession, there is basically nobody there.

Then on to Pensacola for a much-needed dose of tourism.  Started with the Musuem of Naval Aviation out at the gigantic Pensacola Naval Station.  I suppose for my generation the space program was the crowning technological achievement, but I have always been enthralled with the story of the development of aviation, and have done a lot of reading on the aviation pioneers over the years.  So a good aircraft musuem is always a thrill for me. The Pensacola naval air display did not dissapoint.

Even lunch was fun.  When they closed the Cubi Point Phillipines naval base in the 1980s, they dismantled the entire officers club bar and shipped it to the museum.  All the plaques, memorobilia, stuff from the walls, it was all as real as the aircraft — and also great food.

Which brings us to Pensacola’s second most well known attraction — Joe Patti’s Seafood.  It is basically this huge warehouse, where the fishing boats come in on one side, they throw the fish to the cutting tables inside, and then onto the ice where you pick out what you want.  Plus there is a gourmet and wine shop with everything accompaniment to fish you could ask for.

So last night’s New Year’s feast was wild shrimp cocktail, fresh cauught redfish teriyaki, rice, slaw and Key Lime layer cake.  A dash of crawfish etouffe for lunch today.

For our last act of tourism, we visited the replicas of the Nina and Pinta, visiting Pensacola over the holidays and going in for winter work at one of the nearby shipyards.  Very well done and presented.  They came down the Western Rivers from Chicago just the way we did.  I can imagine the surprise of the lockmasters on the radio:  “Okay, come on down, skipper.  What kind of boat you got there, and what’s your registration?” “Two fourteenth century caravels, 80 feet each.  Registration Seville, Spain.”

What if you built a marina and nobody came?

Yup, Florida.

An unremarkable picture, but after two months in the swamps, beaches and sand look pretty good.

The very first naval aircraft from 1911.

If this thing was just wood, I’m pretty sure I could fly it.

John with the original Blue Angels fighters.

Navy NC4, first plane across the Atlantic.

Pair of PBY Catalina’s, the legendary patrol/bomber/rescue craft of the Pacific. Sorry, Ray not a P2 Neptune or P3 Orion in sight!

Cubi Officers Club Bar

Joe Patti’s

Sunday brunch at 5 Sisters Blues Cafe. Blind blues pianist is a bit of a cliche, but he was good!

When my phone went off with a huge shriek at 5 a.m. last Thursday morning it was a shock to see “Tornado Warning” flashing on the screen.  But firing up the computer showed that the line of tornado-spawning storms was a few miles south of our dock at Bobby’s Fish Camp.  Needless to say, we stayed another day at Bobby’s.

Then on down the river to Mobile and another one of those moments that keep this trip so interesting:  You literally come around a bend out of a swamp that is totally deserted — for two days we had seen a couple tows, but no other boats at all.  Then a huge harbor, skyscrapers, ships, military vessels, shopping malls, Starbucks — from a primordial world to civilization in the space of a half mile.

We rented a car and did our last minute Christmas shopping (mostly cat toys) while I tried to keep the car over 50 miles per hour after weeks at 8.  We celebrated last night at the very fancy Trellis Room in the Renaissance Battleground Hotel — Battleground because it was Andrew Jackson’s headquarters before he took off to whup the British at New Orleans.

Our extra day at Bobby’s we ate at the restaurant there.  The “Fisherman’s Platter” special we both had:  fried catfish, fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, crab cake, stuffed crab, hushpuppies, french fries, slaw.  The wine: Seagram’s Sangria in a screw cap.

Last night’s selections:  Paul — sauteed quail in garlic butter, beer-braised pork belly (not for the faint of heart or our many friends who have Chinese on Christmas), Bananas Foster (which my friend Eric does not care for because they remind him of eating a potassium-deprived middleweight fighter).  John — Mediterranean salad, chicken and “dumplings” (gnocchi), apple spice cake.  The wine:  Rosenblum Vinters Reserve Zinfandel, one of those robust, crazily alcoholic wines that stand up very well to rarish pork belly.

In their own element, both meals were delicious.

We miss Molly (who is frantically getting ready to move) and Fredi, but this has been a memorable holiday.  Hope it was for you, too.

Mobile, the un-Demopolis

The very excellent Trellis Room

Tree at the Battleground Hotel

Bad picture of us at the tree.

Sparta helping John assemble robot kit he got for Christmas

Sparta’s Christmas necklace, part of our shopping spree at Pet Smart

Fast catamaran for anti-pirate duty

“Stealth” destroyer. Funny how we could see it pretty clearly.

Massive drydocks line the harbor

Glad this boy wasn’t moving

Poor Fredi back home asking “When’s Dad going to put in the turkey?”

We are back under way — three weeks and $4,000 later!!

The engine guys did put on a burst of speed once they knew what the problem was and we got back on the river yesterday.  It was one of those “Well, as long as we’re…” projects. “To be safe we’d better replace the cylinder head, and as long as we’ve got it torn down, the bearings had some strain on them, so let’s do those, and pistons are cheaper in sets, so…” And of course there was a part that had to be airfreighted overnight from Japan for $200.

But at Alabama labor rates I didn’t say no to anything, so the guts of the engine are practically new and it seems to be running great. The same job in Connecticut would have been close to $10,000.  John and I did a ton of work, too, and the boat is totally painted top and bottom, the keel faired better than it has ever been, and the varnish touched up.

They are letting the river run to lower the pools behind the dams, and we had a fast trip to our anchorage last night and now down to the famous Bobby’s Fish Camp.  Famous because it is the only place to stop for 216 miles — a fuel dock, a catfish restaurant and some trailers — but everybody stops at Bobby’s, where the people are really nice.

There is an awful lot of trash in the river from recent rain and letting the river run and John got to go swimming on December 18 to unwrap a vine from the prop.  Cold, but he survived, and the river is looking pretty clear right now.

Sparta is not too sure about a boat that actually moves through the water rather than up on nice, solid land, and the engine noise scares her.  So she sleeps all day in a little cubby hole where she can stay nice and warm.  On deck last night at our anchorage she saw fish jumping all over.  We could tell she really, really wanted to go in after one, so it’s off the to pet store for a harness in Mobile, where we will be for Christmas.

All in all, Demopolis was not a bad experience, and being a small town Southerner for a month was an interesting, although unanticipated, part of the trip.

The $4,000 Screw

Screwed Part II

Sparta’s Cat House when we are under way

The Famous Bobby’s Fish Camp

Memsahib Going Back In

Clark Kent? My glasses broke in Demopolis and this is the only pair Walmart had that fit my lenses.

The good news is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the engine — rods, bearings, crankshaft, all that scary stuff.  The bad news is that the problem will still take at least a week to fix and then we have to get the engine back in.  But now that they know what they are dealing with, the Demopolis/Tuscaloosa team seems a bit more motivated to get things wrapped up.  Here’s what happened:

The fitting that holds the air cleaner onto the engine has always been a rattling, rusty piece of engineering.  A couple of months ago in Tennessee, the cheap tack welds that held it on failed and it started to rattle even worse.  One day when we were doing routine engine checks I said to John, “I am going to fix that thing for good” and drilled the welds through for sheet metal screws.  Well, I guess my fix wasn’t any better than the original, because one of the screws worked itself out as we came into the slip here in Demopolis and was sucked into a cylinder where it wiped out one of the pistons.  The mechanic said everything else in the engine looks like new — because it is.

I feel badly because my fix didn’t work, but that fitting has never been right.  When I called Stan Feigenbaum  (the Beta importer and a really nice guy) to tell him what had happened, he somewhat sheepishly said it has been redesigned and is sending me the new model overnight.

Parts have been ordered, and since there is no machining needed, I MIGHT get the engine back Friday, and we MIGHT get it back in Monday or Tuesday, then on to Mobile for Christmas.

Sparta the kitten with her master, savior and very best friend John.

John has long needed a companion on this trip other than a 62-year-old, missed his dog Fredi a lot, and has been a totally good sport about being stuck in Demopolis all this time.

So when we heard the story of Sparta the kitten, she was signed on forthwith.  There is no public animal shelter here for cats, only dogs, and the cat shelter lady is very ill.  So her animals have been distributed temporarily to various foster care homes and Sparta had to live in a cage while waiting for rescue after being abandoned at a local gas station.

She is totally black with yellow eyes (good luck on a ship) and is a sweet, well-mannered little girl who has adapted instantly to life on the boat (or at least life on a boat on the land as we are living it).  John and Sparta are inseparable and she has already learned she can always get a pet and play by jumping on his computer keyboard.  I am glad we have Sparta to distract us while doing time in Demopolis and John really deserved her — and she him.

Sparta on her favorite perch on John’s hanging locker where she is mistress of all she surveys.

Sparta spends a good deal of her day whacking this mouse, which squeaks with each whack.

We are still here, living on the boat while it is on the land (not easy) while the mystery engine knock remains undiagnosed.

The guys here are all friendly and competent, but nothing moves fast — there is no overtime, the place is locked up tight at 4, and deserted on the weekends.  I’ve tried to impress on them the meaning of a “rush charge” and that we will gladly pay for a faster way to get back on the trip, but that is apparently a totally alien, dangerous concept.

So we hauled the boat Monday, it rained Tuesday and rain stops everything, the forklift was broken on Wednesday, we finally got the engine out Thursday and it got to Tuscaloosa Friday.  And during all this time, we kept eliminating possible causes of the knock, so I am still not even close to a guesstimate on the time needed to fix it.

In the meantime, John and I are doing all the painting, varnishing and cleaning that we were going to do in Mobile and have cancelled our stay there.  The boat looks great — thanks to being in fresh water for six months, Memsahib looked like we’d just put her in when she came out of the water.  And still much better to be here than upriver in the really wild parts of Alabama and Mississippi.

Weather has been fantastic — 70s during the day, 50s at night.

Memsahib coming out of the water for surgery. After 6 months in fresh water, she is in extraordinarily good shape compared to a summer in salt water,

Beginning of the engine extraction.

Engine out and ready to go see the specialist in Tuscaloosa.

Repair from the Hangdog reef incident — a little epoxy and a lick of paint was all it took since all that really hit was the tip of the cast iron keel.

The bad news is that Memsahib is going in for open heart surgery tomorrow, since extensive tests (that even required sending the injectors and oil to Tuscaloosa for analysis) have shown that the severe knocking we experienced coming in to the marina is down in the bottom of one of the cylinders.  That means to get to it we have to pull the engine, and that means we have to pull the boat and live on land until it’s fixed.

The good news is that there couldn’t possibly be a better time to be in Demopolis than this, since the “Christmas on the River” celebration is going on all around us.  Demopolis means “City of the People” and there were 40,000 of them in this little town over the weekend for three great events:  the Alabama State Barbecue Championships Friday night, the Christmas on the River Parade on Saturday and the “Floats that Float” Nautical Parade and fireworks last night.

A bit more on each below, but the most amazing thing is that with thousands of people lining the riverbank waiting for the nautical parade last night, the floats all ready to go, and the fireworks all programmed up, the organizers (wisely) decided to postpone the whole thing SINCE GEORGIA WAS LEADING ALABAMA in the SEC conference championship.  Only when Alabama had pulled ahead and won were the floats released down the river.  We were on the barge fuel dock right in the heart of the action and could hear 5,000 TVs in RVs and 10,000 radios in pickup trucks playing the game.  As Alabama would score, huge roars would echo up and down the river and every horn that could be blown was. ROLL TIDE!!

Alabama State Barbecue Championships

How’s this for a deal — all the barbecue and beans you can eat and all the Bud you can drink, plus a great band plus autographis from the Alabama Gang (NASCAR racers) — for $5.  This was a sort of combination community picnic, national level barbecue contest and corporate event rolled into one.  The free barbecue was produced locally and was fabulous, but all the local businesses and corporations hired the top-level barbecue teams and had invitation-only corporate tents. Barbecueing is almost as big here as bass fishing, and the equipment arms race is incredible.

Here’s the deal — if you are sober enough to haul your ID out, you get a beer

Nothing is real subtle in the championship barbecue world

Dozier Hardware corporate tent — reminds me of either the Masters or US Open, can’t recall which

My nephew is a manager with Rock Tenn, but was there a ticket to their fancy/smansy corporate tent waiting for me? But noooooo…

Didn’t know Peterbilt made barbceue trucks — note portable TV dish to watch Alabama game

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Barbecuing is hard, hot work so you need your comforts

Championship level barbecue support vehicles are loaded with sponsor stickers like NASCAR racers

Christmas on the River Parade

I rode my bike over to town thinking in a town of 8,000 the Christmas parade would last 20 minutes.  It was huge — thousands of people, a parade route that stretched through half the county and floats that looked like they had been worked on for months.  Great floats, great Christmas music, cool old vehicles, Southern belles — I love a parade!!

Santa flies over a minature Demopolis

Cute float — one of about 50 from a town with a population of about 8,000

Christmas on the River Queen and Her Court

Nice float by the Methodists, but the REALLY BIG church in the background is the First Baptist

I believe this is the Demopolis Junior Miss candidate. Bad picture, but looks like a winner to me.

Particpants throw candy and beads just like Mardi Gras

Did I mention that we’re in the South?

“Floats that Float” Nautical Parade and Fireworks

This is a really unique parade on the river featuring lighted barges with all kinds of Christmas themes that are pulled up and down the river fight in front of town.  While they go by, fireworks shoot off in the background, then at the parade’s end they really let loose with a great display that shoots right over the water.  Needless to say, from the Marina we had a great view.

Float that floats

Fireworks over water are on my list of the 10 great things in life right up there with World Peace, Chocolate and Mount Gay Rum

My guess is somebody on the other side was casting for bass

We have pretty much closed the first half of Memsahib’s Voyage, 2,921 miles so far in 5 months.  We did the same distance in about 5 hours flying to LGA from Mobile, but that’s cruising.

Warmed up a bit after Pickinsville, and we spent a night on the Tenn-Tom in a beautiful anchorage called Tombigbee Ox Bow just below Howell Heflin Lock.  I thought my northern liberal constitution might go through some sort of lock on its own in a place named after Senator Heflin, but I guess my memoryof his memorable Watergate grilling of John Dean and others kept my blood pressure under control.  John Stennis Lock was a bit stressful, too, but the Deep South has been such a friendly experience for Memsahib and crew that politics can be put aside.  (If they ever name a lock after Mitch McConnell,  it might be a different story.)

We were going to leave the boat in Mobile for Thanksgiving, but ran out of time 200 miles short of our goal, so left her in Demopolis, AL, a very popular spot since it is just above the “no hurricanes” line.  The marina is brand new, with a great clubhouse/laundry/lounge facility and really great docks.  It’s paid for partially by the fact that Demopolis is a huge towboat refueling facility and these days you can make a fair amount filling up a 30,000 gallon diesel tank.

They are actually expanding the facility the Alabama way — marking off a soybean field and digging her out.  When I marvelled to my Demopolis friends about this approach compared to the decades of permits and hearings that would take in CT, they explained that the DEP, EPA, Shoreline Commission and Wetlands Authority in Alabama is pretty much a guy named Buck who is somebody’s nephew and somebody else’s grandson, and who takes these things pretty casually.  I think I saw Buck over at slip E7 in the new marina.

Demopolis and the marinas all over Alabama are full of retired Yankees, because it’s fairly warm in the winter, it isn’t high-rise Florida, and because things are just plain cheap.  We went to the fanciest white-tablecloth restaurant in Demopolis and he top item on the menu (a superb rib-eye) was $18.95.  There was no way to spend $50 for two.  But then again, the wine list was somewhat limited — red or white.

Great to be home for a while to see Molly, Fredi and friends,  even though I get lost in our house.  Lots of work, too, since we finally sold it and are doing a lot of packing while we have the chance. Sad to see piles of trees everywhere, and when I went down to the shore to drop some things off, the extent of the water damage even in a “mild” hurricane was frightening.

Breathtaking — on warm days, why go to a marina when you can stay here for free

You can’t see the club and pool, but this is a really nice place

Marina is getting even bigger as they dig out this field

Pumps do 7,500 gallons per hour, but it still takes all night to fill a tow