Tony M Trawler: Hello, Salt Water!

November 11, 2010

Dog River Marina

VERY small world story:

Here we were in Dog River Marina, not the fanciest but very accommodating marina, and we took Buddy for a long walk through the marina to stretch our legs and check out all the boats. We started chit- chatting with a man (Charlie Crawford) and found out he had bought a Mainship 39 (our boat) to do the Loop and is leaving the end of November 2010. Then we found out he’s about to have a dinghy system put on his Mainship and can’t decide between two systems he’d researched-one from Tom-Kat (Tony M’s former name) and another boat. He had contacted Bob (Tony M’s previous owner) and had pictures of the system in his pocket! Our mouths dropped-how often do you meet some random person in Dog River Marina in Mobile, Alabama that has pictures of your boat in their pocket? We should have bought a lottery ticket that day!

We invited him on our boat to inspect the dinghy system we have and he filled his camera with mucho pictures of the wonderful upgrades Bob and Sue added to our boat. (I hope he has enough time to add everything he wants to!)

Anyway, Charlie turned out to be a great guy. He went out of his way to drive me and Sandra (Magoo) to Walmart to do major provisioning. Then we took him up on his offer to bring us across Mobile Bay to Fairhope, AL to witness the 4 PM cannon discharge (the Marriot Hotel sponsors it) and to check out the upscale town of Fairhope, AL. This town was adorable with flowers on every street corner and lots of shops of everything a tourist and townie would want.

Thanks, Charlie. Fair winds and safe journey…we hope to catch up with you somewhere this winter!


Charlie

Fairhope, AL

We left Mobile, AL and traveled to Orange Beach, AL, stopping at LuLu’s Restaurant, owned by Lucy Buffett, Jimmy Buffet’s sister. While we didn’t see Jimmy Buffett there, we were serenaded by a live band belting out his tunes. They’re famous for “Cheeseburger in Paradise” which Pete declared to be all it was claimed to be. It was a fun place to stop and act like tourists!

River Rats-we traveled from Chicago to Mobile together

Art and Sandra(Magoo) and us

Fun activities at LuLu's

at LuLu's

Orange Beach was an unusual place. The dockmaster isn’t there on Monday or Tuesday so we were given dockage directions by Amber from the corporate office five miles away. She couldn’t see the lines (ropes) crossing the slip she had assigned-we just took an open one and were fine. This tourist town is supposedly very busy in the summer but was a ghost town right now. The town’s main street had rows of boutique-type shops and restaurants with a ferris wheel at one end and a tall condo building at the other end of the promenade. I had read that the oil spill had affected tourism here but we saw no evidence of oil anywhere. We did see some workers outside of Orange Beach working on the beaches-but it looked as if they were doing tests and not cleaning anything.

Orange Beach, AL

Orange Beach, AL promenade

Shortly after leaving Ocean Beach, we were greeted by the “Welcome to Florida” sign. For some reason we were very happy to see this signage-maybe because it’s a milestone for us-Yes, we made it to Florida-3500 nautical miles so far!

The palm trees and colorful houses are fun to see through the binocs!

Cottage style houses

Rosie O'Grady's

We arrived in Pensacola, FL and walked through its historic district which was filled with an extraordinary amount of attorneys. They all had their offices in the cute cottage-style houses-does anyone know why there’s so many lawyers here?

tree supports-Pensacola style

The Blue Angels gave us our own show as we were leaving Pensacola. They are scheduled to perform this weekend so they were practicing of the Pensacola coast. The dolphins also entertained us, along with a couple of surfers paddling across Pensacola Bay. Who needs cable?

Anything to catch a wave!

Blue Angels

dolphin escorts

“FREE DOCK”----Those words always catch our attention. Ft .Walton Beach offered a free dock so naturally we took them up on it. Their main street had your typical shops and a Publix grocery store ( a REAL grocery store!) We had dinner with Art and Sandra (Magoo), chatted with the locals-lots of people trying to catch catfish off the docks-and went to sleep early so we could leave early the next morning. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Pete started the generator to give us some morning heat and discovered it wouldn’t stay running. He changed the filters and it ran perfectly.(Thank You again, Bob!) He didn’t trust it because it was too easy a fix. He ran it awhile, checked it again and discovered a cracked fuel hose. Napa was a 5 minute walk and ten minutes later our generator was fixed –this time really fixed! Ft. Walton Beach let us stay a second night…what hospitality!