Looping Again - Orange Beach and heading East

Finally, after about 4 months, we are re-starting our Great Loop adventure. It was not an April fool’s joke that we actually traveled back to Orange Beach on Monday, April 1 after spending Easter at home. Our good friend Dianne Dimmick volunteered to pick us up at home and chauffeur us on the 6 ½ hour trip. We stopped at a favorite BBQ joint in Evergreen AL that Dianne recommended on the way to the Wharf Marina. The food was good and the comradiere on the trip was superb. Even without including all those plusses, it was cheaper too!

Cheers to the re-start!

Once we arrived at the Wharf Marina, we went to the office and checked in to let them know we were back. It then took three carts to unload all the gear we brought back with us for this leg of the trip. Once we loaded everything on the boat, Diane took off to go check into her hotel room while we started the process of stowing the gear. 

Thanks to Diane for the ride to Orange Beach

When she returned, we had happy hour cocktails on the boat before going to dinner at the Compleat Angler Restaurant at the Wharf Marina Complex. The oysters at this restaurant are our favorite ANYWHERE as they have a slightly salty taste and are fresh off the boat and freshly shucked. Diane had a Cajun “Coon Ass” shrimp dinner that was way too hot for Nan Ellen and me. I think she put some additional hot sauce and added some horseradish left over from the oysters to her sauce.

Dave on clean up duty

The plan was to cast off our lines on Tuesday morning, but that plan was quickly revised once we saw the condition of the boat in daylight. We knew it would be dirty, but did not realize just how dirty. The Marina had done some sandblasting of the seawall, and between the dust from that operation and the pollen, it was obvious that it would take a great deal of time to clean it up properly. When we cleaned around the waterline, there were some areas that did not come clean. After we pulled the fenders to clean them, one had been touching the water and was covered in small barnacles. This made me think that we probably had the same thing happening on anything underwater that was not painted such as running gear. I was pretty confident that the painted areas should be in good shape with fresh bottom paint when we started the trip in October.

Scraping Barnacles off the fender

 We were speaking to one of our dock mates and he mentioned that he knew a good diver to go check out things underwater. We called “Diver Jake” and he came over a couple of hours later. The report was about what we expected. There was growth on the non painted areas which required brushing, scraping, and sanding. In the painted areas, he only had to wave his hand to clean it. When he checked the trim tabs zincs, they were completely gone – only the bolts remained. The main zinc looked nearly new and he simply brushed it off. He replaced the trim tab zincs and only charged us $140 for everything including the 2 sets of zincs he supplied.

"Diver Jake" getting ready to clean the hull

"Diver Jake" installing new zincs on Trim Tabs

 While Tuesday, April 2 was a great day with great weather to clean the boat, bad weather was on the way. The plan was to wait out the weather on Wednesday and possibly cast off the lines on Thursday, April 4. We did not realize what a smart decision that was until we woke up on Thursday morning to a news story about the Carnival Triumph. This is a cruise ship that was in the news earlier this year when it lost power and had to be towed into Mobile AL to offload passengers and to have extensive repairs. It was moored at a shipyard on the Mobile River in downtown Mobile as the storm came through on Wednesday. The storm was so strong; the cruise ship broke free from its mooring and was blown across the river hitting two boats before it came to rest on the other side of the river. Two workers in a construction shack on the dock adjacent to the ship were blown into the river. One of them was found and survived, and the other is still missing as of this writing. When the storm arrived at the Wharf Marina about 20 miles from the cruise ship location, we were securely tied to the dock, but thought we were going for a roller coaster ride while the wind howled for about 20 minutes. It then subsided a bit, but remained strong with hard rain almost all day long. We took advantage of the nasty weather to see the movie “OZ, the Great and Powerful” in 3D at the local theater at the Wharf complex. After paying way too much for admission, popcorn, and splitting a drink, we toured the Wharf Complex shops and came back to the boat for leftover meatloaf. After checking the weather forecast and watching “American Idol” we turned in early.

When we woke up on Thursday, April 4, we decided to have a leisurely breakfast, hit the showers, and do laundry. Once back at the boat, we answered e-mails, returned phone calls, and I started this update to the Blog. The weather was improving in our area, but was forecast to still be marginal where we are going. There are small craft advisories across the entire Panhandle of Florida, and the Coast Guard has a lookout for any survivors from a 21 foot sailboat found inverted near Panama City this morning. Being prudent mariners not on a firm schedule, we decided to spend another day at the Wharf and plan to depart and finally cast off our lines on Friday morning, April 5.

Our plan is to travel to the anchorage at Joe’s Bayou in Choctawhatchee Bay, near Destin, about 70 miles from where we start at the Wharf. Following that stop, we plan to travel to an anchorage in Massalina Bayou east of Panama City about 60 miles east of Joe’s Bayou. We then plan to stop at Port St. Joe Marina in Port St. Joe about 40 miles from Massalina Bayou. Finally, we expect to travel the remaining 50 miles to Carrabelle where we will stage for the trip across the 180 miles of open water of the Gulf of Mexico to Tarpon Springs. 

Our next postings will cover our actual journey once we cast off our lines Friday morning. Stay tuned for more adventures to come.