A long journey starts with the first small step

We've started!!  Only a small step today, but we got away from the dock & we've started!!
Originally, we saw a 3-4 day weather window, which turned out to be wishful thinking with these wintertime cold fronts.  Our beautiful day this Tuesday to cross Mobile Bay (which can get tricky with the long fetch, north winds & incoming tide), turned to crap.  We now are looking at Sat & Sunday to get all the way across Mobile Bay (85 miles Sat to Gulfport, then 96 miles Sunday to an anchorage on the other side of Mobile Bay).  Talk about getting underway at zero-dark-thirty!
We spent most of the last 2 days putting away stuff & securing things on the boat, expecting to rock & roll when we get on the Mississippi Sound & across Mobile Bay.  Forecast is 2-3 ft waves, partly broad on the beam, so we're gonna roll.  We had been at that marina for 7 months, so we had all our junk just laying around, as well as the tools from the recent projects we had been working on.  The marina turned out to be just what I wanted this summer - a good hurricane hole to protect the boat.  And we did well for Hurricane Issac this past August.
Sue was especially glad to get away from the marina this afternoon, after the decrepit boat in the slip next to us (which gave us trouble during the hurricane) had its electrical fire in the breaker panel 2 nites ago.  Sue went aboard with the owner ( a sweet ol lady of 83, but knows nothing about boats) and was turning off switches & breakers when the smoke started pouring out of the panel.  Sue dragged the owner off the boat & ran to disconnect shore power.  She did all the right things quickly.  Must have learned that stuff in Power Squadron classes (and having lived on boats for 4 years now).  The decrepit boat is an all wood Matthews, built in 1968 in Port Clinton OH on Lake Erie (Jeanette & Linda know all about these boats).  But when you neglect them for several years, keep them in the water outside a covered slip, they rot rapidly.
So today, we left the marina & traveled a whole 45 minutes to the city wall at Madisonville, just below the Hwy 22 bridge.  Since we had to go 85 miles tomorrow, and wait for 2 more bridges, we wanted to get a head start.  We had been at this same dock this past August during a Power Squadron rendezvous.  One of our friends from the marina came over to join us at dinner at a local seafood house.
So tomorrow, we want to depart at sunrise, and get to Gulfport.  We had stopped at Gulfport a year ago when we brought the boat from Chattanooga to New Orleans.  Sunday will be a very early start - we want to be underway a half hour prior to sunrise.  We'll have to set something called an alarm clock - which we seldom use since we both retired.  But, hey, would you rather get up real early to spend an hour in rush hour traffic, headed to a boring job, or would you rather get up real early to see the sun rise over the northern Gulf of Mexico, looking for the dolphin playing in your bow wake?  (this is an I.Q. test!)