Location: 30.34’03N/88.05’.30W Dog River Marina – Mobile, AL

Our passage in the Intracoastal this morning was a pleasant ride. We were familiar with some of the area because we have been to Orange Beach a couple of times to visit but from the water it was a new perspective. We had hoped to stop and visit with our son’s mother in law who lives in Orange Beach. We called Ashley to see if we could meet last night at Pirate’s Cove Bistro or Lulu’s (Jimmy Buffet’s sister) restaurant but she has been under the weather and couldn’t make it.

We knew from the weather reports that Mobile Bay was not going to be fun and it wasn’t. As we moved further out into Mobile Bay and started heading north we were back to rocking and rolling. The seas were a wild 2 - 3 ft chop in typically 8 -10 ft of water. To shorten our misery, we cranked up our speed to 17 – 18 and while the ride was faster on top is was not more comfortable. We had heavy spray all over the boat including the flybridge obscuring visibility. We ran on plane for about an hour and then dropped back to displacement speed. We had about 30 miles in open rough water to cover. We ran outside of the ships channel because there were some very big ships running the channel. They can easily cruise at 20 so we could be overrun from behind if we were oblivious to the threat. The stilt building in the photo is adjacent to the ships channel about 20 miles north of the entrance to Mobile Bay. We assume it has some role in the management of ships traffic.

The photos show a marina just behind the bridge at the entrance to Dog River. We arrived at today’s destination Dog River Marina and as always immediately filled our fuel tanks. We average around 6 – 7 gallons of fuel per hour of running time for our boat. At our most efficient cruise speed of 10 mph if we consume 7 gallons of fuel… that’s 1.3 miles per gallon. Non-boaters are probably groaning with that number but most boaters will appreciate that efficiency. We have traveled about 625 miles so far and have about 875 to go. That’s still a lot of fuel. Our boat carries 370 gallons.