We are parked up in Ingram Bayou, opposite Orange Beach, Alabama.
A couple of boats beat us to this popular spot where it is sheltered from northerlies.
We ran 95 miles yesterday, Saturday from New Orleans to Round Island just off Pascagoula, Mississippi. The day dawned fresh and clear...the water was calm-ish and a slight breeze to begin. This came up the closer we got to Mississippi Sound which is a large shallow body of water. The chop made the journey in open water rather rock 'n roll, but tolerable. We had to watch the depth all the time, which can be stressful, and of course we are following the Magenta line, which is the NOAA Intra-coastal Waterway line.
Leaving our dock in the Industrial Canal, New Orleans
Up ahead us the L and N bridge, the only one that we needed to stay open for us. It is a Rail bridge, and the one we waited 1 1/2 hrs for it to open the ghastly night we came into New Orleans.
We were followed by a flotilla of small fishing boats. The owner of the Marina, David Montz was leading a Boy Scout fishing trip for the day, and they followed us down the canal, turning left at the ICW crossroads, just as we did.
Going under the rail bridge on the Industrial canal
Au Revoir New Orleans...we have enjoyed our time with you, and no doubt we will be back some time in the future.We dropped anchor anticipating the calming of the winds, but that didn't happen,and because we were not far off the ICW in the middle of Mississippi Sound, we were subject to the wash from the many tows that go through the night.
Not much of an Island, and it didn't afford us much shelter...we couldn't get close enough to her to make use of the small scrub on her because of her shallow depth.
That is an oil refinery in the distance, along the coast of Pascagoula. The island is in the foreground.
This tiny yacht chose to spend the night alongside us, but his mast tossed to and fro all night, just as we rocked.
The first of the clouds just as the sun was setting.
We were not far from the ICW and the tows going along it all night. We were only about 2 miles from the green marker where this tow is turning.
Fresh out of New Orleans on the ICW we passed the NOLA Coast Guard Station and a NASA facility...you can see the symbol on building to the right.
We went through the South East Pass of the Mississippi where this new Levee and gate is. The wind was cold, and I'm taking photos through the plastic, so some of them aren't too clear, sorry.
The marshes are fantastic places for fishing for Red Fish and Speckled Trout. Our neighbor Tim was parked up in the marsh just off the levee on Big Fish, which CT and he took out there on Friday night, for the Boy Scouts outing.
There were small fishing boats everywhere. This was the first day of good fishing weather for at least a week. They criss-crossed the ICW all around us.
Looking back towards NOLA
Here we are leaving the relative safety of a channel on the ICW for the openness of Mississippi Sound. The body of water on the right is Lake Borgne.
Leaving behind the clearly marked channel...only because it has sides to it...There is a channel to follow across the Sound, it is signposted by red and green markers for the most part. They are quite far apart, but with binoculars we find them easily enough and we have the magenta line on our chartplotter screen to follow. It pays to look around though and make sure you don't just navigate via the chartplotter. You can get into all kinds of strife...you will find out soon.....!:)
I love the way seabirds hitchhike on the lids of some of the barges
The sun went behind clouds and gave this rather eerie light. Pretty clouds though:)It was quite cold without the sun and we had all the plastics closed. There is always a breeze upstairs on the fly deck, coming through the holes in the plastic.
Anyway...back to the park up at Round Island....
Some bright spark designer put the fresh water tank under the master bed! duh! with no baffles to stop the water sloshing! double duh! So, all night, we rocked and rolled and sloshed very loudly!!!! The tank being half full.
We went to be just before 8pm, unable to keep our eyes open any longer. I guess the rocking of the boat has a soporific effect, because we decided that an early night, while good on the night end, wasn't going to be good on the morning end, following.
Waz woke up about every two hours... and got out of bed to check on the anchor. When anchoring out, you can never be too sure that your anchor will hold, especially when the winds change direction, as they did last night. This is winter, after all, so we can expect more squirrelly winds from now on.
I slept until 2am, and then again until 5-something. We stayed in bed until just before six and got up just as the sun was coming over the horizon. Dark clouds, cool, but not cold wind, choppy sea and a northerly wind. We pulled anchor at around 7.10am and went back on our way to the Magenta Line, cutting a corner to get in front of a tow that was rounding the green marker just ahead of us.
We were in only about 8.5 ft of water. Our draft is around 4.6ft, so shallow water isn't much fun to be in. Watchfulness is the key!
These holiday (and perhaps permanent) homes are on the low strip of land that is Dauphin Island (Dolphin Island). We wonder how anyone would want to build here again after being wiped out by Katrina!?
This is a Range Marker, You line range markers up to give you a line of sight (a bit like a rifle sight).If you keep the two lined up, you will stay in the middle of the channel...always being held up by seabirds:). The tows probably use them more than smaller boats.
The Dauphin Island bridge which gives way to Mobile Bay and the Mobile Shipping Channel. We anticipate a wide channel, but it was in fact very small. We wondered whether it was wide enough for some of the huge ships that go up and down this normally very busy channel. We were fortunate today that we had easy passage.
The ship on the left of the oil rig is a Supply vessel. I think you will have seen some of the previous photos of these vessels being built. The arm out to the right is the flare arm for burning off gas.
We saw this little boat from a long way off, tearing through the water towards us, but it was making way towards a yacht in our path on the ICW. Not sure what they were doing there, but the same yacht came into the Bayou tonight bearing a Brazilian flag...could be anything...arms???
These massive condo's are on another skinny piece of land between Bon Secour Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. I can imagine this area is very popular with tourists during the summer months...the bay is lovely.
Leaving Bon Secour Bay....the channel was skinny and very shallow...we averaged 8.5ft most of the way. Not much room to pass Tows, but we did!
Leaving Bon Secour Bay into 'The Narrows' at Fisherman's Bay, and there is a tow coming straight for us in this skinny passage 
We did hail him and passed port to port (on the one whistle). Most of the tug pilots are easy to communicate with. 
This pretty little beach was facing Bon Secour Bay as we went into the narrow channel towards Oyster Bay, past Fisherman's Bay.
Not much room to spare when we passed this tow, but there was another one coming up through Oyster Bay...
Fisherman's Bay condos and marina on our Port side.
You can see how tiny that pass is on the chart plotter. The two triangles in the middle going opposite ways are the tug (bottom) and us (top) Oyster bay is the blue above us.That is the Gulf of Mexico on the right...You can also see that we are crawling through here at 4.3 knots!
Here comes the tow through the narrow channel in Oyster Bay. While the bay might be large, the channel wasn't. It was about 8.5ft through here. Again, we observed the No Wake zone.Throttled riiiiiight back!
Just out of Oyster Bay and the change in foliage is fantastic...such a pretty place! On the other side of this bridge is a restaurant called Lulu's. This is owned by the sister of Jimmy Buffet...an entertainer, who sometimes visits, we are told. It was packed at lunch time. No room for us to pull the boat up so we had to motor on:)
Almost to our night time stop at Orange Beach, this condo complex along with the marina is home to some stunning yachts and motor yachts. 
The lady in pink jumped up and down when she saw us and waved like crazy...we figgered they were all Loopers like us. We are finally meeting up with the folks who have come down the TenTom River at Mobile Bay, Al, having done the Loop this year. We will meet more of them as we all make our way towards Florida. Notice something about the boats?? They are all covered in and look similar from the rear. We are so glad we didn't buy one of these where you have to climb down a stair or ladder at the stern to board and get off.
The Christmas Tree is already up in the center courtyard of the condo.
This little trawler didn't seem able to make up it's mind as to where it was going...then we found it following us to Ingram Bayou...perhaps it figgered we knew where we were going?
Lets go back a little bit, shall we?
We sat around in New Orleans for the rest of last week, doing nothing much, if reading a lot of books is doing nothing much:) At least we were well rested!
We did make a last ditch run to Walmart on Friday afternoon, though, for some cold weather clothes. First, we looked up Sears on the internet, and went back over the Gentilly bridge to find it...only to find a vacant lot where it used to be...another victim of Hurricane Katrina. Also, the nearest Walmart that our GPS told us to go to...and other vacant lot. So, back over the bridge, following the GPS advice, and we ended up going where we had always wanted to go...across the Mississippi River bridge. I will have to post those photos when we have better wifi capabilities. They are on Waz's camera and that make take a while to download.
We said our goodbyes to the Marina staff and 'locals' on Friday, knowing we were leaving on Saturday. We had a small weather window to accomplish our easterly travel, so had to leave then.
Waz and I borrowed the marina truck and went to Min Moon, the Chinese takeout/dine-in along the road in Gentilly. This area was wiped out completely in the hurricane. It is a very poor area, but we didn't want to go anywhere too far at night. The food was fairly good, and we saved the noodle dish for our lunch yesterday..nice to have it second day:)
Leaving was easy..we were well and truly ready to go.
Well, Waz is again snoring on the sofa while I finish this...it is just 9.05pm, so I guess it is time to turn in. We will start a little later tomorrow with only 60 miles to cover. I might get back here tomorrow night or it might be another couple of days..depends on whats going on and if we are marina'd up or not. Probably not as they are more expensive the further east we go. We like parking up in a bayou somewhere:)
Night night
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