Alright December is here!! We had dinner with Wes and Jennifer at the Fairhope Yacht Club. It was so great! The club was beautifully decorated for Christmas and i could see the Christmas lights on my boat that Capt Steve put up for me.

Still in Fairhope with my decorated 🎄Christmas boat and good friends food and beautiful sunsets!

Thanksgiving at my favorite Fairhope restaurant. The food was great and plentiful! The restaurant had FFPP ( froufroupoupou) ambiance locally owned and very cool.

So from 11/26 until 12/02 we stayed in fairhope awaiting our wonderful rigger Wes Stanley and his beautiful wife Jennifer to help us with our mast lights and check the rigging making some adjustments and creating a new anchor line. These guys are great they put up christmas lights on their sailboat for the Yacht Club and do a ton of work for sailboaters, motorboaters and all kinds of racing sailboats. They have a racing sailboat and have been known to race in races to mexico! I am not an expert on this so dont hold it against me if i get something wrong.

So while we were waiting we just reprovisioned shopped and made a trip to Dauphin Island. I loved the old fort there there was so much to learn about the way the soldiers lived and how they fought. SO much thought went into the building and working of the forts. Just walking where the men who fought to keep our country free is an honor. The waves are a little rough out in the bay and the wind is a little chilly but there was still a sailboat out there sailing along rolling side to side. We have enjoyed our time in Fairhope and cant wait for further adventure with the Big Moose and Caretta!

We will be staying in Fairhope for several days to enhance the rigging and wait on our boat buddies to get their rigging inspected and adjusted.

Today is THANKSGIVING so i get to go to Tamaras to eat!!! I heard the people in front of me say they didnt have a reservation so she sat them in the bar and i politely told her that i had called two to three weeks in advance and was told they were only taking walk ins. I got a great table and great service. The food was wonderful. Just like i had remembered.

After our great meal we decided to go driving around Fairhope area and look around. There are many cool places to see in this little town. We drove around and found the Fairhope municipal park where there were thousands of roses blooming surrounding the sparkling water fountain in the center. There was a wooden pier there so we decided to give it a walk and see what we could see. First we found the bulletin board with a chart of Mobil bay. There were several benches in Memory Of those special family members that had passed on along the sides of the pier. Weathered and faded you could still read most of the words on them. Walking up the pier to our right were several liveaboard sailboaters that dont take cleanliness and care part of their daily chores obviously. But the city is trying to get them to leave so they can rebuild or tear down the dock areas. It looks incredibly shallow and i couldnt tell you how long those boats were there for. One couple living aboard and old trawler has refused to leave easily i was told and they were holding up the progress. hahaha just not gonna give up not gonna do it, god love em! The little pier restaurant was closed hopefully it will reopen. That pier was once a great place you could tell. People with children were still fishing on the dock and one net fisherman. He caught a jellyfish and it made his hands numb as well as his mouth because you hold one end in your mouth while throwing it. He said you have to wash the net good to get that jellyfish juice off.

Captains log: If you are going to have a sailboat dont leave it to die in a slip!

Up in the morning headed to Dog River for some fuel and then on to Fairhope Yacht Club. The water today was just a little grumpy with the wind on our nose. Steve put out the staysail while i captained the boat through the narrow channel to the marina. Great and exciting time today. Couldnt fuel up at the fuel dock because the fuel nozzle was too big for the tank and the guy that worked there didnt want to fool with getting the smaller nozzle out so we could fuel up faster. I wasn’t surprised because when we pulled up one guy said he couldnt catch my rope and pull me in and the other guy wouldn’t listen to instruction on how to tie up our boat. I mean he should have known how to tie up in the wind but he was so stubborn because we were telling him how to he just did it his way for spite!! After the fuel debacle we just told him to forget it we headed to fairhope. I mean i have never met so many angry people as i have in this town.

Up at 5;30 off by 6 to the big city of Mobile Al. A beautiful day again to enjoy all of the wonderful sites along the TTB/Black Warrior river.Saw a couple of gators on t he way down sunning on the bank covered in dried mud. So then we were on a great gator hunt and all the logs on the bank began to look like gators, hahaha. It was a great day and we made great time into the city. We tied up to the city dock across from the military and commercial ship building plant. With the wind blowing it took a little bit to get tied up but low and behold it can be done. Fenders need to be horizontal for this dock to catch the rubber protrusions from the dock. T WHey are buffers but can really scratch your boat and leave a chalky color on them. SO we went into town after securing our boats and found a great place to eat called the Inked Squid. It is one of several owned by Panini Pete who is a native of the Fairhope Mobile area, is a chef on one of the cooking channels and has remade (for the better) several restaurants in the Mobile Fairhope area. The food was awesome the atmosphere was great and the fried deviled eggs were good but mine are better. HAHA. Mobile is all decorated foe Christmas so it was a lot of fun walking around the city. Found a little candy shop that had sea salted caramels. I love them. Back to the boat after our excursion and got a really peaceful nights sleep.

ONE MORE DAY to mobile and then to Fairhope where my favorite thanksgiving restaurant is “TAMARAS”! SO many things to see on today’s ride down the TTB. I saw the perfect riverside cabin in the woods that would suit us fine. Then there was a mini tugger and a small barge on the side of the bank that was so cool it looked just like the massive tugs that push the barges up and down the river. Steve and I thought it must be a ferry back and forth across the river for the locals. I just loved the houses with all the new stairways and platforns on the riverside. All the houses(well most)are up on tall stilts so when the water rises 20 foot during flood season the houses dont get flooded. Steve and i even saw a house that was on floatation cylinders that rose up and down on poles depending on the water level. OF course Steve wants to build one and i think it would be just awesome! One more lock to go then MOBILE. I got my fender blankets ready to put on my fenders after one more scraping ride down the lock wall! That way they look pretty and keep my boat off the docks without scratching the boat. Had to overtake a slow barge today and man the current and suck that those things create is amazing. You can actually lose a boat if you are too close behind them and get caught in it. Passed a lot of houses on the edges of the river banks. I always thought someday they would fall in, WELL guess what some of those houses i saw ten years ago have actually fallen off that bank while others are getting close. If you dont build a sturdy retaining wall to keep the river from washing away the bank well better make that house a floating barge cause that is the only way your going to save it! lol I saw so many buffleheads today on the river. Could not get a good picture but that is a beautiful duck. Saw some wooducks as well flittering across the water like high speed jets. AND my favorite was the bald eagle just standing on the bank just hanging out in no hurry and just watching traffic go buy hahaha. We also passed the last place that we had a great time playing with Axle on the side of the river in a little beach area. Really really miss that guy. It was a sad few minutes passing that place, I call it Axle’ Beach. We anchored out in a slew that opens up into a lake but with our mast we could not make it past the overhanging trees that covered the entrance into the wider area. So we practiced stern and bow anchoring and buddy that boat did not move at all that night(i know i stayed up all night to watch the anchor alarm). Our buddies got a good bite and also slept well. I think i was the only one awake lol.