A ship in harbor is safe. But that is not what ships are for.

We’ve been docked outside Karen and Sjur’s house for 2 solid weeks now, and between Karen’s amazing cooking, Sjur’s history and swimming lessons, and the hammock chairs, we might seriously consider staying forever.

Everybody should have these chairs in their house.

But as a sign in the laundry room at the Fairhope Alabama municipal marina once reminded us, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”

Leaving this particular harbor poses some challenges, however. Getting here through Charlotte Harbor was tricky — the bay is wide, but shallow, and even in the marked channel our depth alarm tripped off so often it finally gave up like “OK guys, you want to try sliding your 4 foot 3 inch keel through 4 foot 2 inch water, you go right ahead.”

Once we turned into the residential canal where Karen and Sjur live, everything was fine. But when we woke up the next morning we thought, “hmm, were there always that many oysters on the wall?” A northeasterly wind had kicked up and was blowing all the water straight out of the harbor into the Gulf. On top of that, the tide had gone out. And the result was, poor Long Way Home was sitting in the mud.

The oyster band gets wider as the tide recedes.

The simple solution is of course to leave at high tide. However, the tidal rhythm around here at this time of year features a “low high” and a “high high” – essentially there’s one large cycle each day with a plateau in the middle.

The “low high” around 5pm gives us less than a foot of extra water to play in.

We had come in during that plateau period, but with the winds blowing the way they were, it seemed safest to leave during the true high tide. Problem is, all month high tide has been happening sometime after midnight. Even that probably would have been ok if we had dealt with this situation when we first came in two weeks ago, but we’re still here (due to aforementioned hammock chairs, good company, etc.) and now it’s Lunar New Year, which means it’s really dark at night.

Yesterday, though, the winds finally died down and the water level seems to be re-equilibrating. So we’re going to try to squeeze out on the late-afternoon “low-high” and find a deeper place to drop our anchor before dark. We restocked on coffee, checked the engines, loaded the bikes back on deck, and just need to refill the propane tank so we’ll be ready to go. All aboard!