11-20-11
Today was a pretty boring day. Lilo hopped in the dinghy again, and I have started to think she believes it to be funny. The people on Awe-Spray and on Bettie P are anchored with us again tonight, for the third night in a row, and we ought to be in Mobile AL by tomorrow afternoon. We passed a very loud steel processing plant about midway through the day, with sirens and machinery screaming at us all the way.
We picked up more than 17 tugs on AIS, which is a system to locate barges and other boats. We've got an AIS receiver, but no transmitter, while other boats sometimes have transmitters. All that means is that, on other people's AIS, we won't show up, while some recreational boats like us DO have a transmitter, and so they show up on our own AIS. It has come in handy many times cutting through these tiny bends in the river, when you never know when you'll come in contact with a barge. These things are very important to know, because if you're cutting around a skinny bend in the river and a barge meets you on the same half of the river, it's YOU that has to make the super-crazy, racecar-driver-moves to get out of his way. On a boat our size and speed, that isn't the easiest thing to do. Hence, AIS.
One thing you don't get a lot of on the boat is quiet. From about 4:30 in the morning to around 6:00, the generator is running. (And my father is the only one awake, I promise you that. I have seen 4:30 a few times in my life, and I don't relish the thought of seeing another.) After that, the engine is running up until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. After only about an hour of silence, the generator is running yet again, until sevenish. So, all in all, you get three or four hours of silence, and those hours are filled with people talking, the weather running, or maybe the VHF radio. Or, right now, Lilo's most irritating squeaky toy. There isn't a lot of silence on the boat, so after a while, you begin to actually notice silence, and enjoy all of it that you can get. Noise isn't a bad thing, it just gets to be too much, sometimes.

Happy holidays, yall. I'm a little early, but hey, it can't hurt.
Love,
Annakah on Kama Hele