11/16/2014 - 11/18/2014 - The Wharf Marina

On Sunday the weather was to start turning "yucky" in the afternoon so Al, Kay, Josh and I rode our bikes (needed some exercise!) to West Marine and then we toured the other side of The Wharf where the big amphitheater and water park was.  Not much else going on, just the same things as before - walk the shops at The Wharf and out to eat.  Beth and Randy and Susan's friends Patty and Dick have cars so all of the girls went shopping.  

Al and Kay have red lights on their back deck and we have blue!

 

Beth and Randy had other plans for dinner and Susan and Jerry went back to the condo with Patty and Dick so it was just the six of us.

Monday morning around 5:30 AM the front came through with gusty winds and heavy rain.  It did not last long - thank goodness.  When I got up to take Teak out it was still blowing (which was expected all day and into tomorrow) and the temperature was starting to drop.  A good day to stay inside and read!  The Wharf Marina takes used oil so Josh decided to change the engine oil while Al and Ron changed theirs also.  Another maintenance item down!

When I got up on Tuesday morning the temperature was 33!  Brrrrr!  I hope it's going to start getting warmer.  Teak may like this weather but I do not!  It was starting to look like our Florida and Alabama time was coming to an end.  Our plan was to leave tomorrow morning for Biloxi.  The weather indicated that we would have two good weather window days to do Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound so we started getting the boat ready for our departure.  Josh call Biloxi for a slip and then decided to call New Orleans, Pontchartrain Landing.  They said someone would call us back.  It was getting close to 4 PM and we still did not have a call back so Josh called again and was told that they have no open slips available.  Someone rented all the slips until the end of the year.  Not Good!  Decisions, decisions! Do we want to go to Biloxi and hang out there with no floating docks and with the winds that they are predicting or stay put with floating docks?  We decided to stay put and maybe rent a car and go home.  We need to take care of our medical insurance renewal situation for next year because we just found out that it's due by December 15th.  Of course, everything that we need to make an intelligent decision is at home!  During our (supposed to be) last meal together with Beth, Randy, Al, Kay, Linda and Ron, we informed everyone about the situation and our new plan.  Ron and Linda still plan to head out first thing in the morning but now they will go offshore to Venice instead of meeting us in New Orleans.  Go with the flow - things happen for a reason!

11/15/2014 - Saturday - Orange Beach Marina to The Wharf

I took a look again at the 10 day weather forecast and it still looks like Wednesday and Thursday of next week will be low wind around this area, then picking back up all the way through the 24th.  We need at least three good low wind days to get to New Orleans, one day to move to the Wharf, one day to Biloxi and one day to New Orleans.  Both Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Sound are open water and if the wind is blowing 10+ knots we stay put! 

Around 10:30 we hopped on our bikes and headed back to town for some more exploring.  As we were heading out, I told Kay and Al that the weather is going to get yucky again until sometime next week and Kay said because today is a beautiful day let's go to The Wharf this afternoon and be with the rest of the group.  She said if the weather is going to be that yucky, why not be with the others. We can't do anything outside anyway regardless of where we are.

We road our bikes over to the beach to look around, then over to a clothing store and to a BBQ place for lunch.  The place was so good!  I never had cole slaw on a chicken sandwich before.  During lunch we decided that if Orange Beach Marina would give us a weekly discount we would stay. If not we would leave and head back to The Wharf, they both cost the same. There was no weekly rate, so we loaded up the bikes, checked for sand in the strainers, prepared the boat for traveling and headed out around 1:15 PM.  Exiting Orange Beach Marina was a piece of cake!  All you needed to do is remember "red right return"!   When leaving the marina, the greens were on our right all the way to the bridge, then hug the bridge and turn towards the ICW with "red right return" all the way.   We had plenty of water and never ran aground!  Our welcoming committee, Ron, Linda, Randy and Beth helped us dock and welcomed us back with the group.  This time we were docked at a different place than before so Teak was a little confused! 

Our last bike ride around Orange Beach

Bye Bye Orange Beach - I will miss this place!

Heading to The Wharf we passed this boat towing a shell of a boat

11/13/2014 - 11/14/2014 - Orange Beach Marina

11/13/2014 - Thursday. It was cold, windy and rainy so I cleaned the inside of the boat, did all the laundry, baked in the oven, played on the computer and read my book. Nice relaxing day!  Thank goodness we were here, protected from the north winds and not out in the open at the Wharf.  Josh found out today that his arbitration that was scheduled for the middle of December may be postponed.   Maybe he will reconsider about taking the boat back to Texas for awhile.  There's a lot that we have not done in this area that I would still like to do.  We could leave the boat for several weeks, go home for the holidays, take care of home business and then come back to do some more cruising.  This is the best time of the year (if it's not in the 30's) and it's not just a short trip to get here with our boat.

Josh would never live aboard a boat. I think his time frame on a boat is running out on this trip.  Maybe in our future we can trailer our Whaler over here, rent a condo for a week and play!

11/14/2014 - Friday morning Teak woke me up for some reason wanting to play (I guess she liked the cold weather) and gave Josh the "one eye".  Not what he wanted first thing in the morning!  The temperature outside was reading 36, the sun was coming out and the sky looked clear but it was a bit windy.  Good day for biking!  We bundled up and road our bikes to town of Orange Beach, exploring all the grocery stores (three of them - Wine Dixie, Publix and Walmart), restaurants (Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Seafood, BBQ - you name it, they have it) and all the other shops.  Too cold to do any beach walking!  The BBQ really smelled good but we all decided on pizza before riding back to our boats.  Maybe BBQ for tomorrow's lunch!  Later in the afternoon Randy and Beth came by to pick up Al and Kay to go TV shopping. Their TV broke the day before and they said we could tag along.  You should have seen us - four adults packed in the back seat of Randy's Infinity!  Actually, two women questioned us at a red light, asking if we had been out partying.  They were behind us for a while and just could not understand why we would pack into a car like we did.  They just don't understand BOATERS!  After our shopping trip, we all gathered on Al and Kay's boat for happy hour and to watch Al along with Josh, supervising the setup of their new TV.  LOL!  Al is a great delegator!  Susan and Jerry are spending the weekend at a TMCA friend's condo in Gulf Shores enjoying some dry land time and Ron and Linda will be heading to the Wharf from Pensacola sometime tomorrow.  We should all be together sometime next week for a day or so.

11/12/2014 - Wednesday - Orange Beach Marina Play Day #2

Another great day!  We started off with some more beach time, strolling up and down enjoying the beautiful scenery before the weather starts to turn yucky.  Orange Beach reminds me of Destin and Panama City with a lot of beach for beach walking.  After our walk and a dinghy ride around Terry Cove we went back to our boats for lunch and then started putting away the dinghies.

If I was going to leave our boat in this area, I would leave it either here because you have a lot of water (dinghy, paddleboard, kayak) and land things to do or at Pensacola's Palafox Marina because of downtown proximity (they always have something going on) and you can ride your bike all over (Joe Patti's) or at the Wharf just because they have floating docks (but not much to do after a couple of days).

Ron and Linda Gerdes drove over from Palafox Marina for a visit and took us over to the Wharf so we could have Prime Rib with the rest of the group (Prime Rib Wednesday at Ginny Lane Bar and Grill, yummy!).  We checked with the Wharf office to make sure they had slips for us because Ron and Linda will be coming in on Saturday and Al and Kay will be coming along with us sometime next week.

We visited with Randy and Beth and Jerry and Susan before it was time to head to dinner.  Susan informed Josh that they will not be heading back to Texas with us so once we are at the Wharf we will look for a good weather window to head to Biloxi and New Orleans, two days of open water.

After dinner, Randy drove us back to our marina.  We had some great entertainment listening to his car navigation system.  Randy and Beth Lawson http://randbsailingadventures.wordpress.com/ are great people! If you run across them while cruising, tell them hi for us.

This is a service dog for the hearing impaired.  He's having fun digging for crabs.  

Beach Time!

Kay got wet!

A large Grand Banks Aleutian coming in the jetties from Nassau, heading to the Wharf

Kay was able to get this picture of dolphins playing in Terry Cove.

Dinner at Ginny Lane Bar and Grill

 

 

Banana split martini - YUMMY!

Randy's horseradish purchased from the hot sauce store at the Wharf