Blocked!

We had a late lunch on the island, at the Painted Marlin (lunch specials there go 'till 4:00); good food and a nice view of the Laguna Madre...

A warm, breezy day here, but we were in the shade at this mostly open air restaurant.

When we came home, we talked about taking the boat out for a short run.  But sometime between that discussion and actually getting ready to head out, the sky clouded over and the wind piped up.  Knowing that it might be a couple days before we can get out again, I told Joan I was just going to go for a short ride - just to knock any slime off the bottom.  I also said, "If I don't take a camera, we'll for sure see dolphins!"

"I'm in," she said.

When I went out to get the boat ready, I was surprised by how high the tide was - literally over the lower platform on our dock...

And, a bit of a climb to get into the boat.  Heading down our canal...

We got to the end of our canal, started to make the turn around the far end, and...

Are you shitting me???  It's the dredge!  There's no one on it and it is staked out across the canal... we can't get through!  I try to be a somewhat positive kinda guy - I hate that dredge.  It's like a damn zombie: it keeps coming back.  Oh, they hide out for the months we are gone, then we come back and... "Brains!  Brains!"... they pop back up again.

OK, now that I have that out of my system, we did a short "canal cruise"... not as much fun as going to visit some dolphins, but it was good to move the boat.

Is the water really that much higher that usual?  Yes, thanks for asking.  We get high tides this time of year.  When late December/early January rolls around, we'll have a bunch of lower than normal tides.  Heading towards the next canal over, we saw this...

Those bushes sticking out of the water on the right side - those are on land.  See the seawall in the photo below...

That is generally 3 feet or more above the water level.  The lower part of the dock below is over a foot under water...

Heading back after making a U-turn two canals over...

And more high water...

The boat on this lift is inches from floating off the lift...

And, when we got back to our dock - the view from the boat...

Joan grabbed a 2-step stepladder (her legs are a lot longer than mine) once she was off the boat - made it easier for me to climb down.  I was able to hose off the port pontoon from the high part of our dock - that's a first.

Generally, the deck of our boat is about level with the lowest part of our dock.  Not often we have to climb to get on or off the boat from our dock.