After the debacle of the night before, I say I’m driving. If this goes south, I want it to be me at the helm and responsible. It isn’t a complicated plan, but it’s still blowing 30 kts, and once we commit to going backward, there is no stopping. The crew will have to jump on board as we push off to make the turn. The walk goes relatively smoothly with Will, Christian and Daniel passing bumpers forward and rolling the boat along the land. But when they jump on and I go to reverse back into the docking area, the wind takes the bow faster than the stern.
We are now blowing quickly sideways toward a parked barge and the shore beyond. Lots of yelling. I reverse back to go into the channel, but now I’m tracking to slam backward into the other side of the docking area. I shift hard forward to avoid this, but now I’m drifting deep into the shore. I see Mr. Shell Morgan and his crew running to try to catch us. I go to neutral, the bow has to drift down so I can turn. So much yelling. I wait. More yelling. The bow drifts down, and I rev it into reverse and clear the far side parking lot by less than two feet. We have escaped Shell Morgan. Everyone is OK. Agora is OK. It could have gone so wrong, but we are on our way.
Everyone has gotten some sleep, and after our narrow escape, there is a fair amount of back-patting. Christian’s flying leap, Daniel turning on his SCUBA superpowers, and my narrow escape from the fumbled departure. We fall back into the hours of relative calm of motoring down the ICW in daylight. Spotting bald eagles and random swamp shacks.
In between, I’m planning the next bridges and fuel stops, the twists and turns. That’s about the time I realized our backup digital fuel gauge shows we are about empty. It’s been a long time since Shell Morgan, but not enough to be running empty. I could go into a lot of fuel burn math here that Bill walked me through, but the end result is the fuel gauge isn’t reading correctly, and due to my own short-sightedness, we didn’t actually fill up at Shell Morgan. We just filled up on what the fuel gauge was reading. So, we basically know nothing about the fuel level. But we’re pretty sure it would be extremely close to running out of fuel by Gulfport, and running out of diesel is a terrible option, especially since we would likely be in the middle of crossing the Mississippi River when it happened.
After much searching and talking with Oscar and a team of ICW experts who are now following the trip, we determined our only stop is at Morgan City. Only problem is that the fuel dock is just on the wrong side of a 50-foot bridge. Agora’s mast is 70’.
After some interesting calls with very helpful traffic control around Morgan City, we learn there is a public dock just on our side of the short bridge, and it is probably only a 10-minute walk to the fuel dock on the other side of the bridge. I sure am glad I bought four 5-gallon jerry cans instead of two 10-gallon ones. It took two trips and some sore shoulders, but we got Agora 100% filled up and even got some local BBQ to-go while we were there!
The adventure continues.
We’re over halfway there and feeling more comfortable with bridge and lock procedures, but there was a bigger lock just after Morgan City which wouldn’t be a big deal except as we go to stop in the middle, Bill (who is driving at the time) makes the “uh oh” sound, and says “I can’t get into reverse.” I look back to see black smoke coming out of the back and look over the side only to see what can be described as black sludge floating around the boat. I jump back and work the throttle, which suddenly engages and seems fine for now, but enough to give us a scare.
Things get back into a routine. Sleep, drive, watch, eat, sleep and continue. Scenery changes, swampland, industrial, neighborhoods, ports, shipyards, repeat. But, the procedure is about the same: radio any barges, bridges or locks you’re coming to, and be clear on your next steps and traffic. That is until we encounter a bridge operator we’re going to call “The Rose”.
I actually have a note from Oscar about this particular bridge operator, saying she is “a sweetie,” and we should be nice to her, but we caught her at a rough time. The wind is howling (it never actually stopped howling), and when I call her, she tells me the bridge can’t be raised in this much wind, so all traffic is stopped until the weather improves. Crap. We are now circling, burning fuel and time.
I come up for my shift to find Christian and my dad shining a spotlight on trees, random docks, and rusted-out barges, and arguing about what to tie up to. They have been circling for three hours and are both noticeably irritated.
Christian starts with, “We should just call the bridge again.” I tell him, “Go ahead, but they were clear they have to wait until the wind dies down.” Christian says, “I’m calling them.”
I would pay large sums to have a recording of this call, because after about 20 minutes, he comes up and tells us, “She’ll let us through, but don’t say it on the radio, so no one knows.” We laughed until he emphatically told us to go to the bridge as fast as we could. Maybe at some point I’ll get Christian to write a post about this, but my memory of the retelling went something like this.
Christian: “Hey, we are the sailboat that’s been circling around. And well, we’re getting low on fuel… any chance we can open the bridge soon?”
Rose of Larose: “We can’t in this wind, it can twist the bridge.”
Christian: “Oh, of course, and we wouldn’t want you to get in trouble or anything, but what if we came right up to the bridge, and <insert Christian swooshing sound here>, we speed under real quick so we don’t run out of gas.”
Rose of Larose: “Hell, get up here and don’t say anything on the radio, these barges have plenty of fuel.”
And sure enough, without horn or green light or public notice, the bridge was raised. And with Christian emphatically telling me to go faster, we scooted under and we’re back on our way again.
At this point, it’s Sunday morning. We’ve been going for about two and a half days of an estimated three and a half day journey, and we are gearing up for our final boss of logistics: the Mississippi River. I’ve been warned by multiple people – the Mississippi is wide, fast and full of large commercial tankers. You have locks and bridges on both sides of the river, so it’s an hour or two of nonstop radio comms and logistics while playing a big game of frogger with tankers.
But if we get past this final stretch, it’s basically a free pass to Gulfport, and an easy street to Pensacola. I flubbed the comms coming out of the first lock because at the moment I forgot the name of the lock we were leaving from, but a random barge jumped on and told them where we were leaving from and headed to (side note: these barge guys really are extremely nice and helpful).
We make our way across the Mississippi without issue, and the final lock gets us on its schedule behind a barge. I call ahead to the final lift bridge on this grand adventure – and our crash course in ICW navigation – to tell them we’re coming through. It’s been a bumpy road, but we’ve made it through groundings, crash landings, and fuel scares to the last bridge call of our three-day adventure. Just one more bridge.
Sailing Agora 
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