Houma to Morgan City
10 June 2014 | Morgan City, LA
Beverly/cloudy and windy, some rain
This is the railroad bridge we went under to get to the docks. It's all rusty and decrepit looking so we thought it didn't work. But later in the evening a signal sounded and the bridge lowered for an Amtrak train. Surprise!
Well, we picked an ugly day to travel. The wind increased over the course of the day, as did the cloud cover. It also sprinkled off and on. On the plus side, it kept us cooler. On the minus side, it made those barges need even more room at times. We motored the whole way, as the waterway winds around a lot. It took 10 hours to go 37 miles with the current against us most of the way. We did get to see a float plane land in front of us, crossing the ICW and going into a bayou. We had never seen that before!
We did have 1 bridge to open but there was no delay. We had 1 lock to traverse; we waited a few minutes for oncoming traffic, but then the bridge tender asked us to "float the lock" so we just slowly motored along it and they gradually closed the gate behind us and opened the gate in front of us - pretty easy! (This lock is to prevent salt water intrusion, not to change water levels.)
The wind was blowing pretty hard by the time we got to the Morgan City pleasure dock, so it was a challenge getting in, but Ralph timed it just right. It's not a very nice dock (primitive), in fact it's our least favorite place to tie up. Unfortunately, unless we wanted to run the ICW at night (not a good idea since the barges do) we had to stop there. Fortunately, the wind began to die down and we had a fairly quiet night.