Yesterday we were up at about 6:00 in the morning. At about 7:45 we signaled with a long horn toot, looked both ways to make sure a longer-than-two-football-fields-barge/tug wasn’t coming our way, then stuck our nose back into the intracoastal for a long day to New Orleans. 

It was drizzling and continued to rain off and on all day. Ran into lots of hyacinths everywhere in the water – it was pretty boring. We passed ship building areas, then some beautiful homes just before the Barataria Bridge and went through some flood gates which they say have magnetic fields that can impact your compass and auto pilot – and maybe other things(????). Then a casino and we were ready to do the dreaded Harvey Lock.

Approaching the lock we were getting no response from the lock master on the radio so I called on the phone and he couldn’t have been nicer. He told me just what to do. He said – I will toot the horn three times then again two times then a green light will come on then I will tell you come on through. Have fenders on your starboard side – got my big balls out and attached them to the starboard side along with bow, stern and spring lines. The lock master’s helper came down and threw me a line and I attached it to the boat and we started going up ( never used our lines which I so nicely attached). When we got to the top, the lock master had disappeared so we released and threw the line back. The lock transition took about 45 minutes. When the gate opened we entered the Mighty Mississippi River. And mighty she was. Even though we were going downstream she felt like a bucking bronco for the first couple of miles and there was a lot of debris to dodge but she settled down just before we turned east again into the Industrial lock.

When I called on the VHF the lock master said we could ‘t get through with this group (too many of the big guys waiting) so we should tie up to the dock behind the dol to our starboard side and and wait for his call. Wasn’t a bad place to hang but it was loooong. Michael took the opportunity to attend to some maintenance items. After waiting three hours the lock master called on the VHF and said come NOW and when we came in the lock to tie up on our port side. Of course I already had the big balls on the starboard side. So, running around like a crazy woman, I changed the big balls and all three lines to port side. We pull in the lock, again the only ones in the lock, and the lock master throws me HIS line and we don’t even need balls. Michael is very good at using bow and stern thrusters to keep us centered in the lock. Then the lock master comes back, retrieves his line, toots the horn and we proceed out. Did I mention it is now DARK? Now we have to contact two more bridges which went pretty quickly. Then we were surprised to see a railroad bridge – very hard to see at night-but we did see the very very long train crossing it. We called the bridge master on the VHF several times with no response. Then finally after about 30 minutes the bridge lifted and we went through. Not a peep on the VHF from the bridge operator though. Just more horn toots.

Earlier we made reservations at Seabrook Marina just outside of New Orleans – I think this is a real marina. They say they have showers, laundry facilities – yeah, laundry and even a courtesy car. We’ll be in hog heaven! The price is $1.10/ft. plus $7.00 for electricity or $51.00 a night for us. If you stay five days or longer the rate drops to $.85 plus $7.00 for electricity or $41.00 a night. It looks like there is a significant storm coming in on Saturday and Sunday. It may be cold and very breezy so we might end up staying here for five days.

Once we made it under the railroad bridge the Seabrook Marina was just around the corner which we easily found, finding the slip, not so much. Did I mention it is DARK out here. We scouted around but couldn’t see any slip numbers. So we docked in a vacant slip and walked around until we found our slip number 12. Then we un-docked and went to our slip and re-docked. Marinas have a bad habit of not making the slip numbers visible to the boaters, day or night. These numbers were on the docks so when you are walking, looking down at the dock, you can see them – DUH!

Anyway we finally got settled at about 9:00. Our eight hour day turned into over 13 hours. We warmed up leftovers and hit the sack! Lived another day to tell the story……Patience is truly a virtue!