Bazar’s Second Wave

Today we continued our trek across the Sound and made our second and final stop in Mississippi.  We arrived in Biloxi in the early afternoon since our trip was just about 5 hours.  We were greeted at the dock of Point Cadet Marina by a very friendly harbor master with a "Welcome to Biloxi"!!  We were now at mile marker 88. ( We entered the GICW outside of Galveston at mm 350 and counted backwards to 0 at the Harvey Lock near New Orleans.  Now as we move east the mile markers are in ascending order.) With some of the afternoon left we thought that we would venture into another Golden Nugget since, again, just like in Lake Charles, we were staying at their marina. We tried our luck at the casino but stopped early on since no one was winning.  We were to leave before sun up the next morning because we had over a 70 mile journey ahead of us, so we turned in early.

We spent part of the day discovering Bay St. Louis and to our surprise it was charming with spectacular views of the bay.  Here it is..... Well the sand and view were pretty but if you notice we have our winter coats and gloves on!  The high was 52 degrees with none other than the North wind!  This is Ken and Lori who we have enjoyed spending time with on our first leg of our journey.

Today we left South Shore Harbor Marina in New Orleans after being there 3 days and never set eyes on anything in New Orleans, except Walmart!  Oh well, I don't think we missed much that we would be interested in.  We woke up to winds out of the North at about 15 knots and we had to enter Lake Pontchartrain to get back on the ICW and the waves again just tossed us around like a cork.  We tried to reduce our windage by opening up all our eisenglass windows and then we were freezing.  It was not the  way I wanted to start my Monday morning but we survived and things calmed down once we entered the ICW. Ken told us we should not see much more barge traffic now that we were east of the Mississippi River but we think every tug decided to wait for us to get going and they then all got in line in the narrow channel ahead of us.  It made for an extremely SLOW day since there were about 6-8 of them in a line and it was virtually impossible to pass any of them....

Fogged in AGAIN in New Orleans.  This time the fog didn't lift until about 1pm.  We had great plans today to finally leave LA.  We have been travelling in LA for 14 days!! So plans changed and we had to stay another day.  Lori and I decided it would be a partial spa day, kinda.  Both of us were in desperate need of a hair coloring.  Way to messy to do on the boat so we thought we would make use of the marina facilities. Lori colored my hair and I returned the favor.  This is the first box color I have ever used and both of us came away very pleased.  Sorry, no before and after photos. When I returned to the boat Brent was changing fuel filters and we had spent the better part of yesterday trying to track down a small coolant leak.  We thought a new set of eyes may see something we could have missed and Ken came over and sure enough we found it.  Of course to get to the hose clamp that needed tightening was nearly impossible; but s...

I used to say "who needs an alarm when you have a dog" always up at the same time everyday no matter what day it is.  Now I am saying "who needs an alarm when you have tug boats and fishing boats to literally "wake" you up".  This has happened the past 3 mornings and this morning it was around 5:15am.  We decided to get up for the day, instead of wait for the real alarm, so we could leisurely get ready and enjoy our coffee.  We were to go through the Harvey Lock today and decided to check online if the lock was open..... Challenge #1: the Harvey Lock was closed from 7am-5pm so now our route had to change and we had to go through the Algiers Lock instead which is not the preferred lock because you then have to travel UP the Mississippi River against the current.  The other locks we have traversed we have either been able to hold our position in the middle or float through.  We were not as lucky today. Challenge #2: we were instructed to hug the port si...

Got another early start this morning at 7:30 and travelled 42.2 miles from Houma, LA to Jean Lafitte, LA. We experienced our highest winds today topping out at 14 mph blowing directly on our nose with gusts higher than that.  There were white caps in the GICW!! The picture doesn't do it justice. We only had one swing bridge to go through but it was unique in the sense that it pivoted from the center. We caught our first glimpse of New Orleans to our North at MM 25 but the buildings were too far in the distance to capture a good picture on my IPhone. Tomorrow, however, we will get our opportunity to see The Big Easy as we navigate a couple of locks, many bridges and travel down a small portion of the Mississippi River. We're a bit anxious. Hopefully, if things go well tomorrow, we'll be on the south side of Lake Pontchartrain by tomorrow evening. We arrived today at Team Lafitte Harbor Marina about mid afternoon.  It is located on the Barataria Waterway. ...

Our journey continued from Morgan City, LA to Houma, LA today.  That distance by water is only about 40 miles.  Right from the beginning we had to go through the Bayou Boeuf Lock.  Our luck continued and we were able to float right through without tying up.  We are hoping we can do the same in the future. The scenery changed somewhat during this stretch where we saw Cypress trees covered with Spanish moss and again we saw many bald eagles. The picture above is referred to as a spud boat. Basically, it is a tug with props and running gear but also has four really long "legs" that it plants into the seabed and raised itself up above the surface of the water. Skinny water isn't a problem for them! One of the best parts of the trip so far has been the abundance of wildlife visible from the boat each day. Water foul are everywhere. We've seen dolphins, pelicans and even an otter. We've lost count of the number of bald eagles we've seen over the ...