Ships, bigger ships, busy, busy, Mobile harbor

Well, I have to type in bold print to explain that everything in Mobile Harbor is gigantic.  Our boat seems to have shrunk into a peanut.  There are so many things to see as we cruised down the harbor.  Both of us were taking as many pictures as we could and still pilot our little boat.  Lucky for us, there was very little barge and tow traffic as we came in on Saturday which typically does not differ from the week days on the water.

This is the beginning approach of this harbor.  The smaller boat in the middle of the picture and to the left is actually 39 feet long.  This will give you viewers an idea of the size of the harbor and the ships.

The skyline is full of cranes of many types and sizes.  The cranes load and unload the ships. 

This is one of the huge buckets on a crane, if you look close you can see they are unloading coal and the bucket is dropping a large load of coal from the ship.

This is one of the smallest towboats we have seen.  As he approached our boat, we could not even see the tug, only the barge.  There are two workers on the bow of the barge communicating to the pilot where to move the barge!!!!

This is one of the dry docks for the larger ships to go in for repairs.

Can you imagine trying to assist a captain or piloting a ship into this tiny slot so the ship can be repaired???

This is one of the fleets of tugs that assist all of the large ships in the harbor.  They also escort the ships in from the ocean.  I loved the colors these tugs have chosen.

Here is an up close look at one of the tugboats.  I am trying to convince Erwin we should purchase a tug and convert it to a pleasure boat.  He explained that I would have to win the lottery or have a rich relative.  Hmm, neither of those options are very appealing to me.

Here is another fleet of tugs you can compare to the other fleet.

Here is one of the large ships that was in the harbor when we passed through.



This obviously is one of the many international ships in the harbor.


This is the view of the profile of the ship pictured above.

Here is a ship that some of you might be familiar with, the Carnival Cruise ship.  Check out the number of floors on this puppy.  I can not imagine being on the water and seeing this HUGE ship coming at your boat.

Here is one of the numerous cargo ships that we saw.  These giant cranes load these railroad cars.  Yes, those are railroad boxcars that they pick up and stack on the ship.  OMG, if the sea is rough at all I am told that a railroad car can roll off the top of the stack.  They actually float and become a hazard for the smaller boats as they float at the top of the water.  I feel this is a very good reason not to cruise overseas in the oceans.

We saw this crane pick up and load a boxcar in just a couple of minutes.  It does not even appear there is hardly any time between loading each railroad car.

Then after being fascinated with the back crane loading the boxcars, I realized that there were actually two cranes loading at the same time.  Check it out.

As we were leaving the harbor this shrimp boat was headed back in.  As you can see, the birds were well aware that the catch was good that day.

This ship was coming into the harbor down the channel as we were leaving the bay.  We were surprised that the ship did not have a tug as an escort as they typically do.  It maybe they actually had to get closer to the harbor before the tug assists.

Another type of ship, very different than the ships we have seen in the Great Lakes of the Sault Saint Marie locks.