Burntside Adventures: Negligent Blogger

I have been really quite negligent in updating the blog this trip. The past 3 weeks we have come back down river from Chattanooga all the way to the gulf, stopping at Florence where we met and made friends with two boats, absolutely delightful people. Phil and Marita are a couple on a Heritage East 36, and Mark is single handing his Great Harbor 37, both boats comparable to ours. We went out to dinner with them a couple of times and had several happy hours, and Mark cooked dinner for us on his boat one night. We pulled over at Bay Spring Lake for a couple of days in northern Mississippi, then continued downriver to Demopolis, staying there several days waiting out hurricane Zeta. As soon as the storm passed we went down the Tombigbee with 8 other boats, locking through together. They were all faster than we were but at the end of the day ended up at the same place. The river had good current, making the trip quick, but a little hazardous with all the flotsam from the runoff due to the hurricane. We were going to stop at Dog River Boatyard at Mobile and put in new bowthruster batteries. One of our paired thruster batteries is failing, and my resources say to replace them both. The current batteries are West Marine brand and I was going to get them at the West Marine at Dog River. It was just across the parking lot. However, the manager there failed to get them in a timely manner despite ten days of lead time, so we just continued on across Mobile Bay and down the gulf intercoastal waterway, anchoring along the way. We were entertained at the Dupont Bridge anchorage by F16s from Tyndall AFB doing maneuvers overhead. We anchored at Destin, Florida and dinghied to shore for a meal of wonderful smoked oysters with bacon and cheese, and shrimp ceviche, and a couple of good beers. This part of the trip was all pretty low key. We were headed to Carrabelle to wait for a weather window to cross the gulf.