Date: January 8, 2014
Day on the Cruise: 201
From: Dog River Marina, Mobile, AL
To: Dog River Marina, Mobile, AL
Statute Miles: 0.0 SM
Time: 0.0 Hrs
Cumulative Miles: 5,183.5 SM
On Board: Susan, Chuck, Maggie, Trooper, Peanut
Tonight we are still at Dog River Marina in Mobile, AL getting ready to depart to "Finish this Thing", our Great Loop trip.
The weather is still very cold and the marina water system is still shut off. The pump out system is still inoperable, and today this is presenting a real problem for us. We are full and fixing to be beyond full!
The wind for the last two days has been blowing from the North, and it has blown a good bit of water out of Mobile Bay into the Gulf, thus lowering the water levels at the marina dock by almost two feet. This has made it very difficult to get on and off the boat given the fixed docks here. We have had to lift Maggie on and off the boat. 84 pounds of Golden Retriever is a handful!
I picked Rick and Leila up from the hotel this morning at 10 and brought them back to "Sun Gypsy". It took a while for their boat to warm up, but they, too, found that all was well on their boat. That is with the exception of the bird droppings that were very liberally placed on the decks and rails. We are both in covered slips, and the birds love to congregate in the roof structure above the boats. And these are BIG water fowl of different sorts. Oh the joys of being on the water.
Susan stayed behind to wait for the electronics guy who was coming to try again to reprogram the lower station chartplotter. After several attempts to load new software, the news was not good. The chartplotter lost all memory and crashed. It cannot be fixed on the boat, and if I want to have it reprogrammed, I send it to the factory for them to fix. In fairness, Glen from Dog River warned me that this might happen with the particular model that I have at the lower station. Well, it happened! At least I have a workable chartplotter on the flybridge!
Yesterday when we got to the marina and confirmed that the upper chartplotter had been reprogrammed successfully to take C-Map charts, I ordered a chart card to be shipped to me overnight. It arrived this morning and Glen helped me install it. It worked great, but I did not have a chance to customize my chartplotter with the attributes that I had with the former software until late in the day. So, at 5:00, I went up to the flybridge to configure the displays with the information that I use, and to make sure that the units were what I use, etc. Sort of like a custom set up which you do when you buy something new and take it out of the box. Well, wouldn't you know, but I could not get the chartplotter to give me the water depth. The depth sounder "black box" would not talk to the chartplotter. It was too late to call Glen, so I have to stew about this problem until tomorrow.
This afternoon, we took Rick and Leila to Publix to re-provision, which we also did. We had emptied the refrigerator and freezer before we left the boat in November because we knew the boat would be taken out of the water for bottom cleaning and zinc replacements, and power would be off. So, we had to buy everything for the upcoming trip.
Rick will have "Sun Gypsy" hauled out of the water tomorrow to get his stern thruster put back on from being repaired. Meredith and Steve from "Free at Last" arrived at the marina today from California to get back on their boat. Their son Rick is with them. The plan is for "Blue Moon", "Sun Gypsy", and "Free at Last" to travel together to Carrabelle and then across the Gulf. We will tentatively leave on Friday to head East.
Thanks for Reading!
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