Last night I thought we had an intruder at the stern of the boat. It was a big blue heron (I think a heron). It had landed in our stern and made quite a clatter Then there was a lot of bumping/flapping on the sides of the boat, near our cabin. I looked out to see the heron standing quietly near our cabin port lights (windows) . I woke up Kevin to look and he banged on the side of the cabin near the bird. He didn't get to see him because he scared him of:( I hope it was a good omen that we had a visitor!

We are now on our way to the Mobile river. Still windy in the 20+ knot range and waves 2-3 feet as we cross the bay. We are looking forward to traveling through the rivers. We may have spotty internet- so don't be surprised to see sporadic posts.

I'm picking up now where I left off on the 1st.

We left Mobile Bay and went up the Mobile River. The river was just below flood stage and the current was rather swift and there was a lot of boat traffic, logs and sticks to navigate around. Kevin had loaded our AIS system on my i-pad and I learned how to spot when we were approaching ships and how to identify them. The AIS system shows the positions of large ships and other pleasure craft, like ours, and their names, size of craft, speed and direction they are going are shown on the screen.

Since the river is so curvy and their are a lot of blind turns, you don't want to come around a corner and run smack dab into a tug and barge. We are able to communicate with the tug captain, when we are getting close and decide which direction we should pass each other. The river is also rather narrow, so sometimes you get pretty close. We also learned to talk "passing talk" when the captain of the tug wants you to pass starboard to starboard, it's passing "on the two". If passing port to port, it's "passing on the one". If we hadn't talked directly to the captain and he blew his whistle once, that would be passing on port, if he blew it twice, it's passing on starboard.

Although all the captains have been very pleasant, their southern drawl is hard to discern what they are saying with our yankee ears.

After 57 miles, we anchored in a narrow channel and had to put out 2 anchors so the boat wouldn't block the channel. It was our first time to put out anchors bow and stern. It took a couple of tries to get things to hold but we got it done and enjoyed the evening listening to a variety of bird calls.