Leaving New Orleans via Lake Pontchatrain felt just like sailing Corpus Christi Bay during the winter. Big, open, gray skies over choppy gray/brown water. We motored North away from the Industrial Canal and headed toward the Mississippi Sound by way of the Rigolets.

The wind was steady out of the NE, which is typical because thats exactly where we were headed. A few miles into the river we found a decent close hauled motor-sail tack and charged our way toward the Route 11 and I-10 bridges. By the time we made the Rigolets (rig-oh-lees!?) it was a totally pitch black night. No moon, dark clouds, and the bow splitting wind as cold as a witches tit.

After a few night-blind turns (thank you GPS, radar, and spotlight) we found a great little anchorage in West Old Pearl River right next to the Rigolets swing bridge and played “hot dice” till we passed out. When we woke up, we could see the bridge no more than a mile or two away.

And a little typical bayou traffic… Houseboat?

The huge Rigolets Swing Bridge swung opens “slower than molasses on Christmas,” as said by the bridge master, so don’t let the time lapse fool you. We were just puttering along as slow as we could till that thing opened, then we flew outta there.

Once we were in the Sound we turned East and let 2014’s last sunset chase us all the way to Ship Island. It really was a gorgeous night, but when that sun went down the temperature dropped like a rock. Can we be in the Bahamas yet?

Things started getting pretty choppy. We pushed our way across the channel to Gulfport and anchored just off the leeward side of Ship Island for New Years Eve. The island itself is gorgeous as most of the Miss. Sound barrier islands are, but we were just there for a pit stop. In fact, we were getting tossed around most of the night, and even on two anchors it felt like we were on the verge of being thrown out into the Gulf at any time. That morning, though, we found our anchors dug so deep it took two of us at the bow and and the third working the motor to resurrect the danforth and fluke from their deep sandy tombs.

[That’s Fort Massachusetts; a Civil War era fort on the North side of Ship Island. I’m a huge history buff, and if the weather was nicer you better believe I’d have explored/trespassed the heck outta that thing. ~ H]

After Ship Island we tried to continue East in the Mississippi Sound, but the wind was, as usual, hard in our face as was the strong Mobile Bay current. The old Yanmar pushed the heavy Morgan hard, but we found ourselves lucky to make 3kts. We all sighed a collective “Screw it.” and headed to shore to wait out a couple of storms that looked like this…

We ended up just off Cadet Point in Biloxi where we stayed one night at the city marina and three more on the hook watchin’ the NFL playoffs and local weather on the little Amazon HDTV antenna. Its too bad getting stuck when we’re chomping at the bit to keep moving, but we’d be crazy complain. Biloxi is a very easy town for a few days on the hook, plus we’d just gotten a dinghy so we could row to shore for beer and casino time whenever we wanted. There’s not much of anything for grocery stores in the Point Cadet area, but hey free stay is free stay.

…not to mention, we’d been able to steal some WiFi from a nearby restaurant. So, its pretty much been open season on House of Cards on Netflix the last few days…. Kevin Spacey is a total psychopath…

When we left Biloxi, there was a pretty gnarly freeze coming our way for the next few days, so we hightailed it across the Mobile Bay to jump back in the ditch till Panama City Beach. We’re getting closer…