Kingston Rovers: Sunny, warm Mobile

Welcome to the sunny, warm Gulf Coast-NOT. It is cold, freezing and cloudy. Mobile has a large navy ship building industry and we passed several ships in various stages of being built or repaired. On one of the boats there was an armed guard watching my every move. You can just see his gun sticking out from his back.The ship he is guarding is a Littoral Combat Ship.

What was a surprise was that the ships were trimarans and catamarans-

We believe that the above ship is a High Speed Vessel (catamaran) with a top speed of 48 knots/hour, which is a little faster than our catamaran which does on average 7 knots/hour. We can if we really push it do 16 knots/hour but are burning money not diesel!!!

Also, what was surprising was the hull of the top ship. It was quite sharp and pointed and reminded me of the Stealth bomber. We saw a very large shrink wrapped ship. I would like to have seen them do that with a hair dryer!!

We had a lovely greeting in Mobile Bay. There were my favourite pelicans and dolphins. I did not know which way to point the camera. We passed two fishing boats both with a large flock of birds around them waiting for the chum.

The city of Mobile is not as large as I expected. The population is around 200,000, It had a nice harbour along the Mobile River.

I was so proud of Gary the other day. He shouted for me to look out of the kitchen window and see a bird. I thought it was a cormorant but Gary did not. When I looked it up in my bird book it was a common loon, the same as what we had seen in Canada but in his winter plumage. He had beaten us to Mobile or had we beaten him?

A loon in winter clothing. If you look real close, you can still see some of the spots and stripes in his feathers.

Loons in their summer clothing.
I also took some photos of mallards (one with a tuft on his head). I wonder what causes that (we saw it in the white duck in a previous blog). I even managed to get a distant photo of a Kingfisher.

We have been "stuck" in Mobile since the weekend due to very strong winds, freezing rain, ice and a light dusting of snow. For some of the inhabitants of Mobile, this is the first time they have seen ice and snow. The temperatures have been below freezing for several days so the ice has remained on the ground as the city does not have any snow ploughs. We have been told that this is the coldest winter the South has had in twenty years.