Saturday, October 2, 2021
Temp: 78/70, Humidity: 77/93%, Top Wind: S5 mph, Precip: cloudy, some rain, Miles Traveled: 56,
Number of locks: 3, down 144 feet (84,30,30)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
It was a muggy warm day, with rain while in a lock. Yup. I got wet. But first, let’s go back to the most beautious sunrise start for today! This is the for-real colors. I didn’t do anything to this picture, it’s 100% God’s gift of art. Good morning Saturday!
We meandered out of the Aqua Yacht Harbor Marina around 7:15, which seems to be our normal go-time nowdays. We saw another boat leave ahead of us, and a couple of boats that came around the corner like they were headed down the waterway from the Grand Harbor Marina. It looks like we may have some company in the locks today!
The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway, often called the “Tenn-Tom”, is a 234-mile man-made waterway that connects the Tennessee River (north end) to the Tombigbee River (south end). It took twelve years to construct and was completed in 1984. Today we are leaving Pickwick Lake and entering into the “divide cut” section of the waterway. It runs 39 miles to the first lock – Jamie Whitten Lock & Dam. After that lock, we’ll be in the “canal section”, which runs 46 miles south to Amory Mississippi. This section has five locks & dams. Next will be the river section of the waterway which stretches from Amory south to Demopolis Alabama and encompasses 149 miles and four more locks and dams. We’ll go through the Demopolis lock and then will be on the Tombigbee River, which has one additional lock before we’re in the tidal waters of Mobile Bay in Alabama.
True to its name, this is the Divide Cut – an obviously manmade canal. Surprisingly, there were quite a few fishermen out in their boats zooming up and down the waterway this morning. It is Saturday, so I guess that explains part of it. Captain always tries to be kind and go by the fishing boats slowly with minimal wake. But there were starting to tick him off, because we’d go by slowly, then get back up to normal speed, then the boat would zoom by and stop somewhere ahead of us so we’d have to slow down again. Capt finally said – “That’s it. They each get one slow pass.” HA! But, he still slowed down, because he’s not really a meanie and doesn’t want to flip anybody over. Not that the tows slow down for them…. but we don’t want to be that jerk boat.
There were a few of these spillways that were cool looking. It’s a good design to break the force of the water flow a bit and keep it from just gushing into the waterway.
By 11:00, we were entering Bay Springs Lake, which is held back by the Whitten Lock. Surprisingly, it didn’t look like this particular waterway is subject to big floods. The houses aren’t on stilts. I think it must be pretty constant, and that all flooding and water elevation issues are handled by the Pickwick lock flowing down the Tennessee River. That thing fluxuates daily!
We could see three boats in front of us; NoName, Maggie Joe, and She’s The One. Maggie Jo radioed back to us to let us know that the lock advised that it would be ready for us all at 11:40, so our timing was almost perfect. We only had to tread water for a little bit.
This is the largest lock on the waterway at 84’ tall! I read somewhere that it is the fourth tallest in the nation. This is Maggie Jo in front of us, with the big giant Wizard of Oz doors ahead. It’s hard to tell, but there were water leaks in the walls. This is the only lock we’ve seen (so far) that has all these secret squirrel side doors in the walls! Unfortuantely, they had leaks, so even though it wasn’t raining at this point, I was getting a shower from the lock walls. If you look, you can see a stream of water flowing out of the upper square in front of me.
We were out of the lock by noon, and yes – this is a huge lock!! It’s hard to see any perspective without something else in the picture to scale it to. Just figure that the yellow horizontal bars on the doors are five feet apart. So you can stand a bunch of five foot tall people on top of each other, and you’re going to need 17 people to stand on each of those. 😉
Just five miles later, we were at the Mongomery Lock. We didn’t have to wait for it at all, and it dropped us down 30 feet. We kind of chuckled at the first boat in the fleet of four, because it likes to go about 11-12 mph. But Maggie Jo was only going about 8mph. With these locks so close to one another, it doesn’t matter how fast you go from lock to lock. You’re going to have to wait for the slowest boat, because the lock operator knows how many boats want a ride. I didn’t even take any pictures at that lock. Our third lock was another eight miles and we were at the Rankin Lock by 2:00. This was the view at the top of this lock.
And this is where I got rained on. First it sprinkled a nice Seattle type drizzle.
Then it rained hard, but only for a little while, then back to drizzle.
We didn’t have to wait for this lock either, and we were out and on our way by 2:20. It was just another four miles to the marina from here. We didn’t see any tows or commercial vessels today, which made it a real easy day!
I was looking back at the lock, and I turned around and it wasn’t long before we could see the marina. We were boat number four in the parade, so we just had to float around out here while the others got directed in and got tied up around the fuel dock. Then it was our turn. We were placed on the end of one of the big boat house covered docks this time, away from the other arriving boats. The last time we were here, we were on the fuel dock. That year, our soon to be friends on Parrot Bay from Michigan were on the inside of the dock. When we left in the morning, they got a little bit stuck in the mud!! We helped push them off to get them on their way…. and we have been dear friends ever since! This marina brings back that fond memory. 🥰
We got settled in and then took a walk to go to check in at the marina office. There was a whole bunch of people at the end of our dock, so we thought there was some kind of party going on. Well – not exactly. One of the elderly ladies that lives on a houseboat had parked her car in the water!! Fortunately there were people that got her right out and and onto solid ground. The dockmaster told me that she has lived here for well over twenty years. I don’t know what happened, but although her car didn’t float well, she wasn’t hurt and seemed very calm through the whole ordeal!
After checking in and paying to stay for two nights, we couldn’t get back out on our dock very easily, so we watched the recovery effort. The big boom truck lifted the little car up, and the headlights were still on!
After a bunch of water drained out, the headlights went out, they swung it around to put on the flatbed, and then the horn went off. They ripped the front bumper off and started yanking on stuff. Somebody knew what to yank on, because they got it to stop. They got ‘er set on the flatbed and that’s when we went back to Island Girl. My goodness! The poor lady!
We had a pretty cloudy sunset, and we know there is a lot of rain forecasted for tomorrow. That’s why we decided to stay here for two nights.
Oh! This is kinda cool. This is our voyage summary for the month of September. 988 miles with 16 travel days. The red lines are those where we went over 10mph (down hill). The green lines are under 10mph. It’s cool that Nebo can put our daily voyages together into a monthly summery. Now, if they could just let us combine the monthly ones together to get the entire loop, that would be most awesome!
******************************************
Sunday, October 3, 2021
Temp: 78/69, Humidity: 79/100%, Top Wind: SW7 mph, Precip: cloudy, rain, Miles Traveled: none
~~~~🏈~~~~~🏈~~~~~🏈~~~~~🏈~~~~
Ha! This isn’t really me, because I’m always on vacation. But, I like coffee, and could use a bag full of cash any time! Couldn’t we all? But if one showed up, it would be a bit suspicious, and then I’d probably be on an America’s Most Wanted poster.
We woke up to rain this morning, and it continued until about 11:30, so I made an egg casserole for breakfast. (Remember? Some stay home days mean yummy breakfast!) Then I was a good swab, and did some housekeeping chores, and three loads of laundry. This is the very nice boaters lounge! It wasn’t too tough to just hang out and wait for the washing and drying to get done.
I got all of my walking up and back for the laundry done before the next deluge of rain. Perfect timing, because then it was time to watch some football. My Pacific Northwest kids were watching both the Seahawks and the Mariners, hoping the M’s could possibly score a wildcard spot for the MLB playoffs, but I t didn’t work out that way. The Tampa Bay Rays are top of the American League, so I’ll take that! And the Seahawks won today, so that was good too. The Tampa Bay Bucs are having a tough game as I write this. I like fall and football. It reminds me of being a teenager – my mom would have football on TV, and we’d be sewing and working on Christmas gifts together.
We had a much prettier sunset tonight. Tomorrow should not be as rainy, but then Tuesday is forecasted to be soggy again. I called the Columbus marina earlier today and made reservations. We have four locks to go through between here and there, so we’ll get off of the dock early shmearly with the sunrise. We have not checked with any other boats here to see if anybody is going tomorrow. 🤷♀️. Oh well…. I suspect they’d go way early too.
HA! The Bucs are playing Sunday night football tonight, and my boys were teasing me that they didn’t think they could watch it. So I took this picture to send to them, because they have a real hard time rooting for any team that Tom Brady plays for. I get it – he has way too many Superbowl rings. But there’s more to a team than the QB, so don’t pick on the Bucs! They have the coolest stadium in the NFL.
Here’s the latest forecast. Hot, humid, and wet. We’ll just try to avoid the most wetest days if we can.
P.S. The Bucs won…. only because the Patriots missed a field goal in the last minute of the game. Hey – in the end, a win is a win. 🏈