The parade to Mobile on Nov. 12th

The sun was shining again as we left our anchorage on the Canot and headed for Mobile. Earlier in the week the 14 mile turn bridge had been replaced with a lift bridge, closing river traffic for three days and it was now officially open. We were excited!  In about an hour we would be entering the Mobile ship canal and crossing Mobile Bay, a day we had looked forward to for a long time. We had just passed under a fixed bridge when from around the bend ahead of us and coming straight at us was an unbelievable sight. At first we thought our eyes were deceiving us. But our binoculars confirmed what we saw. Two towboats side by side pushing two barges with the old swing bridge straddling them and they were headed straight at us. Where were we supposed to go?  Tom immediatly put Laughter in neutral and called the tow. He wanted us to pass him port to port. We moved over as far as we could and since depth did not appear to be an issue we chose to stay put until we were sure he had enough room. A little excitement to add to two already very excited people.  As we neared the new 14 mile bridge it appeared to be down. This was confirmed by the fact that there were 8 boats, 9 counting us, and a tow waiting to go under the bridge. A radio discussion with irony, the boat we anchored with at Brannons landing, indicated that they were making adjustments and it would be another hour to an hour and a half before they would lift the bridge.  Soon we were joined by three more boats.  It was like a mini in the water boat show!  We listened to all the chatter on channel 68 of who was going to what marina and before you knew it the bridge was up and we were on our way.  We had a nice parade going through the ship canal, confirmed by the number of workers who stopped to watch us come by. The ship canal was amazing. We passed container ships being filled, ships being built or repaired and several tow boat staging areas.  We had been warned to have eyes in the back of our head as we came through and we quickly understood what that meant. Tow boats were crossing in front of us, ships pulling out as we passed, and more tow boats sideways in the canal pushing barges together. I felt like an ant in tall grass trying to look up at everything but not knowing which way to look next for fear of missing something.  Once our parade entered the bay itself we started to break off into groups of two or three heading off to our respective marinas. Once tied up at Eastern Shore Marina we visited with several other boaters who had come in. We spent two days at Eastern Shore, then moved our boat across the way to Fairhope Yacht Club.  We had a great four days before leaving for Indiana for Thanksgiving.