Days 175

Tensaw River Anchorage - Mobile Convention Center

Start 8:30 AM
End 1:20 PM
Underway 4:50 Hours
Distance 35 miles
Total Miles on Trip 3589
Av Speed 7.2 knots
Weather Sunny , 78 Degrees, Wind 16 Knts NNE

Today end's our adventures on the inland waterways. We have spent 73 days traveling 1829 miles on the river systems from Chicago, IL to Mobile AL. The rivers have been fun, challenging, exciting, beautiful, scary, frustrating and yes at times boring.

Some of the highlights of the river systems have been; Chattanooga, Goose Pond (Ginger Gale Wake Crossing), Boating on the Mighty Mississippi, Wilson Lock, (Both up bound in the fog, and down bound issues), Bobby's Fish Camp, Hoppe's Marina, and most of all getting off Lake Michigan.

Mobile could have been an awesome stop, but the dockage at the Convention Center is the worst dockage we have come across so far. First there are no docks; you tie up to a concrete wall. (Not uncommon at all) The wall has sections falling off, and wall is not a flat wall. Three quarters of the available wall is a curved wall making tying up very difficult. There are very few cleats, and the ones that are there are meant for commercial size vessels. Also they do not have shore power or water. Up until six months ago, there was no charge to dock here. They now charge $50, we did not know this until we were already committed to stopping there. If they improved the dockage, they could make visiting Mobile Al by boat a great experience.

We only stayed in Mobile one night. If the dockage was better we would have liked to spend more time there and explored they town.

The Port of Mobile has a very large commercial presents. We passed many ships being unloaded, There were tankers, bulk carriers and container ships, as well as barges being loaded and unloaded. Mobile is also the headquarters of Austal USA, a worldwide shipbuilding company. They build both commercial vessels and naval vessels. We missed the christening of the Navies latest Expeditionary Fast Transport vessel by two days.

Tomorrow we are heading down Mobile Bay and going to Gulf Shores LA.