Homeport Marina is along the intracoastal waterway in a narrow section that gives you an idea of why people call the ICW the Ditch. It is not far from where the ICW opens up into Mobile Bay. The Marina is in nice condition, has several liveaboards (which makes for a nice atmosphere), and has a restaurant on site - Lulu's, which is a bit of a destination with a sand volleyball court, live music, a gift shop, and an arcade.
Sunday afternoon we walked a couple of blocks to the Track, a small amusement park with go kart tracks, a few other ride/activities, and an arcade. We had dinner at Lulu's, which was festive.
Monday and Tuesday we focused on school and work. I washed the whole deck of the boat and I was really pleased with the result. Another thing they have at Lulu's is a hair braiding station. One Tuesday evening the girls each got a hair wrap braid.
Staying at Palafox and Homeport has made me realize its gotten hot. And although one of the nice things about a marina is that its more protected from the wind, the downside when you don't have air conditioning is that you also get less breeze to cool you off. Fortunately it hasn't been too hot to sleep at night, but lately there are at least a couple of hours in the afternoon that are pretty uncomfortable. In fact, on Tuesday afternoon I decided to move boat school to the bar at Lulu's so that we could have cold sodas and enjoy the breeze.
We also had some boater connections at Homeport. We use an app called NoForeignLand to connect with other cruisers (mostly sailboats use the app). We can update the location fo our boat, join groups, message people, and see where other boats that use the app are located. While at Homeport, one of the cruisers we met in New Orleans reached out to ask if we were at Homeport. It turns out Homeport is where they usually keep their boat!
We had another coincidental overlap leaving Homeport. While we were at Palafox Marina in Florida and the girls were catching crabs, a woman on a nice motorboat offered to take the girls' picture with the crab. She texted the pictures to me. I received a text from her Wednesday morning on our way into Mobile Bay. They had just passed us! I didn't recognize them, but apparently they had recognized us from a distance at Homeport the day before and come by our boat to say hi but we weren't around. Since they saw our boat name, they knew they were passing us on the way out (not sure if they saw our name on the transom or on AIS).