Day 50 – 11/22/23

Starting location: Fairhope Docks Marina, AL

Weather: Strong winds to 30mph on our nose all night. Cooler morning at 51. Mostly cloudy. Low 60s pm. More sunny, some clouds. Winds dying down a bit.

Ending location: same

Statute miles: 0

General summary: Well, the anchor didn’t arrive yesterday, but the rode and markers did, early evening. Anchor should be here today, so we need another night in the marina to get everything put together. At least we can start marking the rode this morning and then it needs to soak in water before being installed anyway.

There were very strong winds overnight blowing directly into the marina channel opening, which we are moored near. This created a lot of wave action (remember fetch – it was blowing across the entire bay from West to East) making us bounce up and down from front to back this time. In the wee hours of the morning, we heard a metallic clang and ran outside to find one of the pieces that guides a mooring line on the bow (called a chock) popped off, its bolts shearing in half from the force of the line pulling on it. Fortunately there was no damage to the fiberglass deck. We were able to save the major metal piece as it hadn’t yet gone swimming. Hopefully it can be re-installed. It isn’t essential to tie up for the short term, but keeps the line from rubbing and stressing the railing in certain situations.

I learned a bit of science today. In all my boating experience in salty waterways I have been used to four daily tides – two low and two high, due to gravitational effects from the moon on the oceans as it rotates around the earth throughout the day. An occasional day only has 3. Looking at tide tables for the Gulf, I only saw two for most days – one low and one high. The Gulf has what are called diurnal tides rather than open ocean water that has semi-diurnal (each set of tides at same heights) or mixed (all 4 tides at different heights). The diurnal tides are due to the interference from land masses (Florida, Mexico, Cuba, Central America) on the water entering and leaving the Gulf. This apparently also occurs on the West side of Alaska.

We confirmed with the marina office that USPS delivers around 2pm and they agreed to call us when our anchor was delivered. Walked back into Fairhope for lunch. Then checked Amazon which posted, again, that our package would arrive “by 8pm”. The marina office closes at 5 every day and the post office won’t deliver if the office is closed. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving so the post office and marina office will be closed. Seemed like we were stuck in an infinite loop. The post office in Fairhope was a block away from where we had lunch, so we stopped in to see how to fix this. The anchor was there! Walked back to the marina with it.

Winds and waves improving by evening. Forecast looks even better for weather and winds tomorrow. Should be able enter the Gulf Intercostal Waterway (ICW) and start our journey to the Florida Panhandle and onward.

What broke:

Boater information: If you have something mailed to a marina, make sure to put your boat name next to your name on the address c/o the marina name. This helps the marina identify its owner and keeps them from returning it to the post office (not what delayed our anchor delivery, but the marina gave us that feedback)