Tuesday, January 7: Heading Back to the Boat; "Let's Finish this Thing"!

Date:                           January 7, 2014

Day on the Cruise:      200

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 back on the boat at Dog River Marina getting ready to "Finish This Thing"! Yee Haw!

We drove back to the marina this morning, arriving about 11:00. We were planning to pick up Rick and Leila from "Sun Gypsy" at the Mobile Airport, but their flight was cancelled and they got in on another flight late tonight and decided to go to a Hotel.

Good decision on that! The temps today were in the teens when we left the house. We arrived in Mobile to temps in the low 20's. The wind-chill was in the teens. Bitter cold on the water! Thankfully, Dog River had turned the heat on in the boat yesterday, so we arrived to a toasty, warm boat. Surprisingly, we found the boat water working and the head flushing, which was a relief. The Marina assigned a "Project Manager" to our work in December. Capt. Glen Warwick has been very professional and has communicated with me regularly, and I have him to thank for the heat!

We unloaded the car and unpacked all our stuff. I met with Glen and the marina folks and found all my work done but the re-programming of the chartplotters. The electronics guy was successful in re-programming the flybridge chartplotter, but he could not get the lower station unit to take the software. He will return tomorrow with some new software.

It has been so cold here that the marina has turned the dock water supply off and drained the system. We need water in the boat badly. We also need a pump out of the holding tank, but the Marina pump out system is frozen up. This is not a good thing!

We ate dinner tonight at Wintzell's in Mobile. Gumbo, Gumbo, Gumbo! Yum. By the time we got back to the boat, it was back to 20 or so. Too cold to make this fun!

The "Weekender" at Wintzell's is a beautiful Bloody Mary with a skewer of veggies, shrimp and Conecuh sausage. Yum Yum. My buddy Ed McNeill would LOVE this baby!

Our plan is to get underway on Thursday or Friday with "Sun Gypsy" and another boat, "Free at Last" whom we had been with a couple of times last year. We will head on over to Carrabelle, FL to leave for the Gulf crossing to Tarpon Springs, FL. Tomorrow we will pick up Rick and Leila at their hotel and get them back to the marina.

Thanks for Reading!