8 Mar 13

Cleaned the boat deck, moved the whisker pole, kayak and folding bike all to the port side, which seems to have reduced our list to starboard a bit. Then, after pumping out the holding tanks, we pulled out of Gulfport and headed for Biloxi. As soon as we cleared the harbor channel, we turned off the engine and sailed - actually sailed for the first time since we left Kemah - under full main and genoa all the way to the entry channel into Biloxi. Nice cool day with SE 10 - 12. Tied up in Pt. Cadet Marina with help from Jud, the Harbor Master, at about 14:30. Later, we walked the 1.5 miles into Biloxi town center and ate dinner at McElroy’s seafood restaurant. More shrimp than we could eat. We also noticed that we were the only two people in the entire restaurant (out of maybe 60 people) who were not clinically obese. We were also the only ones to take out a “go” box at the end and to skip desert (man, that key lime pie sure looked tempting). We will wait here in Biloxi for a good weather window to get the 70 nautical miles across Mobile Bay; based on the current forecasts, Tuesday,12 Mar, after the front passes, looks like the best bet, but we might make a run for it on Sunday. But that is the start of Daylight Savings Time, which means we will lose another hour of sleep. We thought about stopping into Bayou La Batre to visit Forest Gump, but there does not seem to be much there but shrimp boats.

9 Mar 13

Bought a couple of 3 day bus passes (unlimited travel anywhere within the Coastal Transit Authority area - Gulfport/Biloxi/Ocean Springs) for $12 each; what a bargain. This morning we visited the Ohr-O’Keefe Art Museum, designed by Frank Geary, with exhibits of Dusti Bonge and others - very nice. Then onto the Biloxi Visitor’s Center - also very nice - followed by a visit to the Negrotto Gallery to see some Stig Marcussen paintings (we had seen his work in a restaurant on Friday night at McElroy’s. We bought a couple of prints. A quick trip to Walmart for a bit of shopping finished the day. Dinner aboard.

10 Mar 13

We were going to go to Ocean Springs, but the bus does not run there on Sundays; hey, it’s the south baby. So we took the bus to Winn Dixie and got a major provisioning run out of the way and found a Starbucks as a bonus. Then back to the boat to cook up some jambalaya and chili for the upcoming travels. I also changed the oil and oil filter in the main engine - always something to do on a boat. Dinner aboard: the first part of the jambalaya.

11 Mar 13

The wind howled in the rigging all night long and then at about 06:30 it shifted very rapidly from S to NNW and ratcheted up to about 22 knots. I got up to check the dock lines and looked out at a most spectacular wall cloud at the leading edge of the cold front - just like you see on that Discovery channel show “The Storm Chasers”. Got Terri up to see it. She asked what we were going to do about it and I said “unplug the electrical and electronic devices and curl up in bed in a fetal position and hope for the best”. We got a bit of rain and a couple of good gusts, then ..... nothing. Not a single bolt of lightning or clap of thunder. So, we caught the bus to Ocean Springs and had an excellent day touring the Shearwater Pottery collection and the Walter Inglis Anderson Art Museum. Now there was a guy who knew how to fill up a wall with color and interesting tableaux. Cy Twombly could have learned a thing or two from this guy. The sky cleared up in the afternoon and it turned out to be a really nice day. Dinner aboard. We are up way before sunrise in the morning to make the 68 mile crossing of the rest of the Mississippi Sound and Mobile Bay; destination: Lulu’s (she is Jimmy Buffet’s sister and has a reputedly nice bar/restaurant/marina).