Better Late than Never

I obviously got out of the habit of updating this while we were on shore leave. We're in Mississippi!

We flew home with Chelsea the Monday before TG, went to medical and eye appointments, and cleaned out the storage unit. Thanksgiving was the traditional picnic outside of Prescott and the weather was surprisingly nice. It was good to see friends and relatives. My mother and grandmother both looked well, and my middle sister and her husband came over from California.

Even though we were back home for nine days, it went by in a blur, and soon we were 24 hours from flying back with a long list of to-dos. Didn't sleep much that night, but got it (mostly) done, and we were back in New Orleans last Wednesday night. The first day we provisioned and started making plans, but a front blew through that I'm glad we were not out in. The folks two slips over got a late start and left in the middle of it on their way to Cuba. I hope they are OK.

It gave us time to work on our list, and better appreciate our weather luck with more than a week long trip from Houston. It looked like we could at least sneak across Lake Ponchatrain, fuel up, and maybe  stay the night near Slidell. The window opened a little more and it looked like we could slide between two fronts moving their way east since we were moving east. The wind died down early Sunday morning and we left the New Orleans marina an hour after dawn. The lake was pretty flat and it was foggy but no problems getting to the cleverly named "The Dock" and topping up the diesel tanks. Other than a few showers it looked like the weather would hold out till dark, so we kept going.

We missed the weather call by a few hours. By mid afternoon the temperature was dropping and the wind was gusting over 20 knots. We weren't out there long enough for the gulf to really start kicking up more that some healthy chop, but we were glad when the Long Beach marina was in sight. Heather did a masterful docking job, and after a shower we had dinner at Steve's.

We have a short day today. We're only trying to get to Biloxi. This gives us a good starting point to scoot across Mobile bay tomorrow.