Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Mobile Bay, Gulf Inter coastal and DOLPHINS !

Notice the blue clips on our flybridge bimini....
The sun has degraded our stitching in the canvas and the loop for the back rail gave out :-(

We started our day with Renee working on some school work while Erik washed down the boat and went with our new Looper friends to return our rental car.   We fueled up, filled water tank and pumped waste tank.  We departed Fairhope Docks Marina at about 845am to head back out into Mobile Bay.  The water was much smoother today then when we crossed over to Fairhope on Friday.  It made for a smooth 26 mile run down the bay to the mouth of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway.  We cruised another 15 miles on the waterway to The Warf Marina where we met up and visited with our friends aboard Jet Stream, KC and Scott, whom we had met several years ago at Green Turtle Bay.  We sat and visited with them and exchanged stories.  Nice to see them.  We then spent an hour or so walking around The Warf which is quite a destination with many shops, restaurants, and a giant Ferris wheel.  It was the heat of the afternoon and we were getting hungry so we messaged Scott and KC to join us for lunch at Villagio which was a nice place. 

A smooth day to cruise on Mobile Bay


A little blurry, bu this guy was on a paddle board at least 2 miles out into Mobile Bay as we were crossing over from Fairhope to the Intercoastal.  Crazy! 


LuLus restaurant.  Jimmy Buffets sister owns this


                         
We bid our farewells to our friends and continued on our way.   Just another few miles we came to Ingrams Bayou which is where we had planned to anchor out for the night.  on our way into the Bayou we had our first dolphin sightings....yay...we'd been eagerly awaiting that!  After dropping the anchor several more dolphins came back into the bayou to play and swim around us.  unfortunately, we only got one decent pick.   They are sneaky things.  We were very hot and decided to take a dip in the water, to the chagrin of our friends and family who warned us of alligators and snakes.....eh.....we saw none of the above.

Our first sighting of dolphins....Yay!
Hard to get good pics of these boogers

We noticed that although we had the boat plugged in and battery charger/inverter on for a decent portion of the day that our house bank of 4 golf card batteries were only showing a 19% charge...ugh.  That is an issue and would not likely get us through the night at anchor running the fridge (and certainly not the all important pot of coffee in the morning).   We pulled anchor and decided to head back just a bit to a marina we had passed that Renee looked at online and determined that they have a decent service department.   After settling in, hooking up to electric, and getting the AC pumping we tried investigating our inverter/battery issue to no avail.   We will have to get some pro advice in the morning tomorrow.   We are hopeful that it is something simple.  Additionally, we would like and electrican to hook up the "Smart Start" capacitor to our AC unint still.  We are crossing our fingers that both can be addressed.

Even though this could put us back a day from our original schedule, this is not a necessarily a bad thing because we are now hoping to be able to catch one of the Blue Angels practices at Pensacola on Tuesday morning.   We are now only a few miles from the Florida border and Pensacola is just inside of the state.   This timing could work out for the best.   
       
One of MANY homes with boat lifts right along the intercoastal waterway



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