Friday, July 8, 2011

Way up there

This morning we traveled to Sabin channel this has been one of the deepest ones so far.   We passed through the Port Arthur lot of ship work going on watched a couple of guys climb around a large crane type barge doing some repair work.   



As we went under the bridge that was also have some construction done on it as well.    






Pleasure cove was the next area we came to this is the spot for the RV’ers they have a camp ground that was packed full.  It also has a large Coast guard pressense, we passed 3 boats coming in and parking lot full of boats on trailers.  Time to remove the magazines.



 After going under the Port Arthur Bridge we entered into the 62 mile run through both marsh and pastureland with oil pumps on both sides.  It has been reported that you can see alligators swimming or basking on the shores we did not see any.  They have gator holes and crawls set into the shore and banks.  We passed through Taylor Bayou outfall canal one of the anchorage’s we talked about staying at we have made such good time we reached here earlier morning.  When we came to the East bay canal it was very swallow and narrow, we had to wait behind a barge to let Eastbound empty barges go through.  The current and winds were blowing them around the captain said it was like a large sailboat.  The Sylvia barge which we had been following for many hours called and ahead to a couple barges coming eastbound that he was waiting on to see if it was safe for us to pass.  He told us to go ahead of him; the other barges said it was good to go.  This saved us hours of waiting.  The current was ok we were able to get through it.  There is dredging operations going on throughout this canal.   We arrived at Stingaree Marina at 7:30 got tied up filled the water and got settled for the night, there is a restaurant right at the marina so we went in and grabbed dinner.  Around 8:45 the Sylvia barge finally passed by.  I am so glad he let us go ahead of him!!  We headed back to the boat Gil charted our course for tomorrow looks like we are only about 32 miles from home!!  

Texas Baby!!!

We just crossed into the great state of Texas!!!

Early Sunrise

Woke up this morning at 4:30 to the smell of fire they were welding on one of the large platforms by the ship yard.  At 5:20 we started to untie, a couple was just coming up to set up to fish we talked with them for a few mins while getting things ready to go.  They ask if we had met the “pet” yet, they have a 12 gator that hangs out at the pier and can be seen most days by the fishing cleaning area.  We headed to the lift bridge passing a lot of traffic both small fishing boats as well as large barges.  There were many barges that had run around to spend the night so it was hard to tell with all the light which barge was moving.   I was on bow duty with the spot light until the sun came up just after the lift bridge.  We are pretty sure this is the last bridge we will need open to get home, Texas has all 73 foot bridges.  We ran down a 20 mile stretch of a long narrow waterway dead into the wind.    This is the path that leads out of Louisiana and into Texas we can almost smell the lone star.