Warn a Girl Would Ya?

Mobile was a shock. After three and a half months on the inland rivers, we had become used to quiet marinas, quieter anchorages surrounded by a backdrop of green and abundant wildlife. Everything changed literally around a bend in the river . Suddenly we were knee deep in barges, tows crossing the river to assemble barges, ocean going freighters, navy vessels, dry docks and mammoth gantries and cranes. Yikes!

The contrast in scale was shocking as well. We went from being close to the largest thing around to something that could easily be squashed. I took comfort from the fact that none of the captains on the other vessels would want to do the paper work involved should they run us down. They would be sure to warn us if we were in the wrong gplace.This was confirmed later when we heard one captain of a freighter admonish a group of loopers trying to cross the shipping channel. “Get out of the channel now! We are coming in and there are two other ships behind me.”

The scale of the water was also intimidating at first as again it had been months since we were on big water.

Mobile Bay qualifies as big water. It is 35 miles long and 27 miles at its widest point. However, it is only 5-10 feet deep outside of the shipping channel. It is a incised fluvial valley that formed during the most recent glaciation and associated drop in sea level. Since the subsequent postglacial sea-level rise, it has been filling in with fluvial deposits. The length of the bay means waves can build to significant heights. Its shallow depth ensures that the wave period is short and the waves can build quickly. All this means that it is not a good place to be when the wind comes up. It is possible for a boat with a 3.5 foot draft like Moon Dance to bottom out in a 4 foot chop.

The wind was light as we crossed the bay to Fairhope on the eastern shore. The yacht club was one of the few places where we could find an empty slip. It has little in the way of amenities for travelling boaters, no fuel, laundry or pump out. But it was somewhere to tie up to wait out the cold front passing through over the next couple of days.