Making it to Mobile
I rolled over again, my eyes wide staring at the darkness. Emily and I had returned from eating the most magical hamburgers in the world on Syzygy (they were seriously amazing), and it was our last night at anchor before pulling into Mobile. I normally fall asleep immediately in calm anchorages, but I was too excited. We were within 24 hours of completing a major section of our trip, and my mind was buzzing with anticipation. It was the end of a long haul, and my brain bounced with thoughts of seeing friends, taking a shower, and finally getting our mast back.
Dawn brought a hint of warmth, and I gladly hauled up the anchor as we nosed the bow into the channel. At long last, on our GPS the little symbol of our boat creeped into the edge of the real chart, and we again had useful information about where we were headed. Now entering a massive swamp area, the trees receded to bushes, and reeds took over the banks. I stood on the cabin top and couldn’t see anything for miles, except for the skyline of Mobile. The buildings crept closer, and all of a sudden the reeds turned into docks and we were in the heart of Mobile’s shipyards.
Similar to the day we left Chicago, barges mixed with freighters, and sprawling factories and loading docks dominated the shore. My head whipped back in forth, trying to take it all in as we rushed by on the outgoing tide. The downtown waterfront looked like Detroit, with a sidewalk and a loading crane side by side. As we neared the exit into Mobile Bay, the ships grew in size and seaworthiness, from barges to small freighters to bigger freighters, the collection complete with military stealth ships and a UFO- like research vessel. The end was in sight, but something was off. We could see the bay, but it was blocked by walls of metal. As we got closer we saw that there were two larger than life container ships being maneuvered in mysterious directions by rubber-lined pilot boats, up against the hulls at full throttle pushing the ships in a sideways slow motion dance. We had no idea what to do. We could see space to get through but had no idea if it was restricted or a bad idea or if turbulence from the ships would toss us like a leaf in the wind. We turned around to wait and nervously tried to figure out what an adult would do in this situation. Conveniently, waiting was the right thing to do. One ship suddenly took off and headed out to sea, and the other was pushed into the dock. The path was clear, we said sayonara to the land of industry, and we found ourselves in open water.
Mobile Bay stretched endlessly for miles, and I looked around with a happy grin on my face. Pelicans soared past us within inches of the tops of waves, seagulls cried out to us from above, and like a baby duck we followed the rapidly diminishing container ship through the main channel. Wow. My head on a swivel, I absorbed every empty detail of the vastness of space around us. A shape in the distance caught my attention, it appeared again, and I shouted. We were on a collision course with a pair of dolphins! They intersected our path, and began to surface next to our bows, our own personal escort. I don’t think I stopped smiling for the rest of the day after that.
After a rather confusing docking experience (no one was working at the marina that day to give us directions), we shut the engine off and high-fived. We did it. We made it to Mobile. It was the end of the rivers, the end of a whole chapter, an accomplishment we had dreamed of making. We had only a vague idea of where we were headed next, and it didn’t matter. We made it to the ocean, and life was good.
