Alabama; Fairhope and Elberta, Orange Beach
By
Bruce L Ehni
Posted: 2020-04-10T20:22:00Z
Fairhope AL, March 25-April 1, 2020, and Elberta AL April 2, 2020. Fairhope Yacht Club has a beautiful relatively new clubhouse and pool, but unfortunately, we cannot use them due to viral restrictions. This is the FIRST place since leaving Houston with actual working WiFi! Spring here is really beautiful, and this is one of the most beautiful places we’ve encountered since leaving Houston. The weather has been really fine. Mobile Bay is a little unpredictable, calm one minute and quite rough the next, generally too rough to dinghy in. The marina has only 30-amp power, so it’s nice that the weather is cooperating and relatively cool. Peaceful days were spent tinkering (macerator, blower motor, flybridge panels, salon door, dinghy battery), cleaning, and exploring Fly Creek in the dinghy. 
I have strong suspicions a large animal I very briefly saw the back of, was a manatee. We had to return to Houston for a couple of days, returning to Fairhope by car April 1 to find that there had been a strong storm in our absence including a waterspout in Mobile Bay. To our surprise, the boat was a dirty dusty mess with a badly damaged port rubrail. I’ll use my fenderboards outside of our fenders from now on, any time we’re against pilings again no matter the weather, like at this T-head! It’s the second time a perfectly good tie-up turned sour, with damage, in unexpected circumstances. April 2 we moved on down the Bay and GCWW to Barber Marina in Elberta, near Orange Beach, encountering even clearer water and incredibly white sand beaches. It’s a good full service marina, clean and well constructed. We went out into the Gulf for a spell, seeing lots of porpoise; it proved to be a good time on the water. We had been waiting for truly blue water! A lot of people enjoying fine spring weather in primarily small boats, not particularly “social distancing”; rafting up seemed to be the party theme. 
