Gulf Shores, AL to Mobile, AL

Total Miles Traveled 2691

With a multiple wave of storm fronts moving across the country, we decided to leave our anchorage at Pirates Cove for better protection at Dog River Marina near Mobile.

Pirates Cove is one of our favorite anchorages, it is a protected anchorage from wind and waves, has a beach, and a bar and grill a short dinghy ride away.

I’ve posted this urinal picture before, but had to share it again, Pirates Cove is truly a green marina, they recycle all of their beer.

Our friends Mike and Jan on “Trust Me” arrived a few days after us, we were at the same marina at Stock Island in February.  They are also from our home port at Green Turtle Bay; we met them when we bought our Mainship in 2013.

We weighed anchor May 3^rd and traveled our last section of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to Mobile Bay.  Mobile Bay is 413 square miles in area, 31 miles long by 24 miles wide at its maximum width.  Except for the shipping channel, the bay is very shallow with an average depth of 10 feet.

To give you an idea of the size of the ships, this is “Trust Me”, a 49 foot trawler, approaching the shipping channel as a container ship passes their course.

We arrived at Dog River Marina planning to stay only a few days to let the storms pass.  Little did we know that the storms would dump several inches of rain causing major flooding north of us. There were several storm fronts passing across the country, so as soon as the river levels started to drop, another storm would pass through dumping several more inches of rain.  We have been here 18 days.

Another interesting fact about this area is tidal flooding.  Whenever moderate wind blows from the southeast for several days, it pushes the water from the bay into the marina at high tide, which is about 2 feet.  We had only witnessed this once as we are normally here in the fall and the prevailing wind that time of year is out of the northeast.  We have had tidal flooding almost every day during our stay.

This has been a good stop for us though; we have met several old friends, and met new ones.  “Chasing 80 and “Corkscrew” are here and we have met new friends on “Compass Rose” and “Bob n Along”.   Dog River Marina also has a courtesy car so we have used it for provisioning and dining out.  The Mobile Yacht Club is across the street and has great meals at reasonable prices.  We also rented a car last weekend and visited Fairhope and Dauphin Island.

The river levels are falling and the extended forecast looks good for a departure tomorrow May 21^st.  Coffeeville, Alabama is the first lock we will encounter, about 125 miles from the marina.  Until we pass through the lock we will have to deal with tidal waters and river currents associated with dropping the Coffeeville pool down to normal levels.  This chart shows the level downstream of the lock and dam, and the predicted levels a few days out.

The bottom graph on this chart shows the Coffeeville current discharge from the dam, about 25 thousand cubic feet a second today.  I made notes in my log last year when we made this trip and found that our speed dropped to 5 mph at 35 kcfs, and 6 mph at 25 kcfs running our normal engine rpm.  Our normal speed is about 8 mph. 

The next marina from here is Demopolis Alabama, about 225 miles.  There are no services and most of the time no cell phone coverage, it will take us 4 or 5 days of anchoring to reach the marina.