11/6/11 - 11/18/11 We were again southbound in the Tombigbee River. We saw a fellow in a sail boat built from sticks, plastic bottles and blue tarps. We passed him very slowly so as not to upset his fragile craft. A couple of nights later, as we were anchoring in a very secluded lake just off the river, Lace saw a bear. We scrambled to get the binoculars but he ran into the woods and we never saw him again. We later found that this part of Alabama has a sizable bear population. We were now approaching the old "14 mile" railroad swing bridge that was under renovation. The new bridge was already in place and as we rounded a corner there was the old bridge span coming up river on two barges. It took up nearly the entire river width but after a radio chat with one of the tug boat captains we were able to pass. Unfortunately when we got to the new bridge, it had stopped functioning and couldn't be opened. We anchored in the river to wait for repairs. It was just as well because it was cold and raining and not a good travel day anyway. The next morning wasn't much better but the bridge opened and we passed under and made our way down to Mobile, Alabama. Mobile Bay was pretty choppy but we made our way down to Dog River Marina expecting to stay a few days until the weather cleared up. Over the next seven days we re-provisioned, did some maintenance and with the help of friends' rental cars visited the battleship Alabama on permanent display in Mobile, visited the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola and visited Fort Gaines, a civil war fort on Dauphin Island. Even though we had not quite completed the loop, we combined forces with a couple that was about to complete their loop, and hosted a champagne happy hour on the Confetti. By one count we had twenty loopers on the boat to toast our completion.
11/19/11 - 11/30/11 We left Dog River Marina and completed the Great Loop at 11:30 in southern Mobile Bay. We toasted with coffee and changed the burgee (the small flag on the bow) to our gold looper flag signifying that we had completed the Great Loop. Now all we had to do was go 600 miles west to home. We crossed Mississippi Sound in two days anchoring at Cat Island and Rabbit Island Louisiana. We crossed the Mississippi River with it's two locks and headed for Houma Louisiana City Dock. This stretch of the Inter-coastal Canal is flat and swampy with few turns and long straight waterways. We traveled several more days through Morgan City, Port Arthur, and finally into Offats Bayou in southern Galveston Bay. We had a very fortunate weather window and made it up the length of the bay amid heavy ship traffic and into Seabrook Marina on November 30. In ten and a half months we had traveled 7251 miles. We had a great feeling of accomplishment but I was ready for a change back to hard ground. Lace wanted to stay on the boat and never go home. Of course we did go home and even now are working on a staggering to-do list. We don't know what we'll do with the boat. What we do know is that we are going to stay close for another year and then maybe we'll do it all again. There will still be a lot to see: Padre Island, the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and lots of places in Canada that we missed. For right now it's good to be home!
