Day 201- Plans A & B on Tombigbee

Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Temp: 81/67, Humidity: 67/100%, Top Wind: E4 mph, Precip: cloudy, sunny, Miles Traveled: 70, Number of Locks: One more than planned! 3 total with a total drop of 91’ (27,27,36)

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The alarm was set for 5:45. I was up before 5:30 and checked the weather and the Lock Queue report. Things looked pretty good! As planned, David on She’s The One telephoned the lock. then he came over to tell me what he found out. Everything was cleared for take-off, so we got ourselves ready for a 7:00 departure. We were over achievers. Ha! Go figure! We left the dock at 6:42. 🤭 STO followed us out. They are going to follow us today, after a big long discussion about how to get better fuel economy. Plus, they’d like to follow us into what ever anchorage we go to today.

The John Stennis lock is RIGHT here at the marina. The lock master could see us leaving the marina so we talked to him on our way there. This is the only lock that has asked a whole bunch of questions. I remember that from 2018 too. They wanted our Federal Doc number, Boat name and length, farthest north point visited and farthest south destination anticipated on this journey. I don’t know why. 🤷‍♀️ Uncle Sam 👀 is watching! We were through the lock and on our way by 7:20.

I saw this waterfall, which is very unusual. I totally wasn’t ready to leap outside to get a picture, so the camera focused on the rain that I didn’t get wiped off of the windows. 😏 Darn.

This was a cool big ol’ loader machine! It was on railroad tracks so that it could go back and forth for picking material out of the barge. It could reach waaay down, then pull up and dump its load into the trucks that drive underneath the loading chute. It’s real obvious that it is much faster to blow material into a barge than it is to unload the barge, scoop by scoop.

Hey! Another chance at a waterfall! We really had some rain last night, so there is a lot of water and debris in the river. And the river is VERY muddy.

There were lots and lots of birds. These white ones were evenly spread out in many sections of the river. Everybody gets their own fishing zone.

Did you ever see the Duck Dynasty episode where the rednecks put a travel trailer up on an elevated platform, and camoflaged it to be a luxurious duck blind? Well – those crazy fellas were not making that stuff up! It’s a for real thing here in Alabama. Either that or these fine people right here on the banks of the Tombigbee River got their idea from the TV show. But they need to work on the camoflage part. 🤷‍♀️ Yes – we flopped over the eastern state line of ‘Mi’sippi, and now we’re in ‘Bama.

And then there’s this! The favorite photo for all loopers. It’s kind of out of range for my phone camera, but it is an official Superman changing station!! Yes – a phone booth!

It got a little hazy around 9:30, but thankfully it didn’t settle on the water. It did stay cloudy and cool most of the day, which was comfortable.

More birds. This time it was a pair of bald eagles.

Our second lock of the day was the Bevill lock, 36 miles downstream from the Stennis. We were asked to stand-by for about an hour. Boo! 😕 There was a little pixie survey boat tootling around taking some kind of readings. We had to tread water, and there was a lot of plant life floating around on the surface. We think it is some kind of duck weed. I guess we (oops – I mean, Mr. Maintenance) better check all of the strainers later! We arrived here at 10:00, and were finally given the green light to enter into the lock just before 11:00.

There’s the little survey boat on the right as we were leaving. This lock was a 27’ drop, as was the Stennis lock.

When we were released, we had to navigate through some swift current coming from the dam spillway. All the rain from last night has really caused a lot of excess water and debris which is getting more evident the farther down the river we go.

This is a classic old ‘Bama riverside home, right? There was a little shack on the right side, and I wondered if it was the kitchen. Kenny said he wouldn’t want a fire inside!

As we tootled along, I kept researching options for where to stay tonight. Our plan was the Sumter Recreation pond where we stayed in 2018. It is a nice spot and located off the river, so that was Plan A. Plan B would be to go through the next lock, which is just four miles farther downstream, and pull into an offshoot creek called Tombigbee Oxbow, which had real good recent reveiws. We arrived at our planned anchorage just before 3:00. We read mixed reviews on Active Captain about it: some said the entrance was too shallow, others said it was 5’ and then deeper inside. We figured with the river running high that we’d be ok. Not so, Kimosabee! We nosed Island Girl in very slowly, and she slowed down to a stop all by herself. Uh Oh. Abort! She’s the One was waiting in the river for our findings. I radioed them and asked them to check with the lock to see if we could get through. Otherwise, we’d turn around and go back a few miles to a couple of other spots that looked pretty good. David called, and the lockmaster said she’d get the gates open and take us right down. Sweet! So Kenny braaaped the bow thruster a bit to get our bow turned and unstuck a bit, then he eased us back out, and we meandered down to the lock. We never heard the props go ‘chunkchunkchunk’ like they do when we bite the sand in Florida, so we think it was just the bow that stopped in the mud. Whew!
We got right into the lock, the lockmaster closed the doors, and then … she opened them again. What? She radioed and said there was another pleasure boat that would be here in about 20 minutes, and she appreciated our patience. Dang. Oh well. I guess it’s a good idea to telephone the lock ahead of time, right?

The go-fast boat showed up and we finally got through, then we made an immediate turn to starboard to go up a creek. Well, we figured out that this is not really a creek. It is actually the spillway water from the dam! DamnitJim! The current was running at least 2mph and ALL KINDS OF LOGS and debris. Crapola! What are our other options? There aren’t any other anchorages down stream for 45 miles. We could go back through the lock and upriver to a different unknown anchorage. We could try to go fast the 50 miles to Demopolis. But it was 4:00 now, so only about two hours of daylight, so we’d be running fast in the dark on the river, with logs. Not good. It was stressful. 😧 No really great options, so we dropped the hook to see how we’d do. It grabbed right away, we let out 100’ of chain and the current was so strong that it was jumping more chain out over the gypsy. put the bridle on, so we have about 120’ out. We weren’t moving at all, so that was good. However, we knew that the forest debris flowing down at us was going to clunk us and get caught in our chain and bridle. I still thought going up above the lock might be a good idea, but Kenny reassured me we’d be fine. Okee dokee then. I just had to sit down outside in the shade and try to cool off, breathe, and pray a bit. This is only the second time that She’s the One has anchored, and it was certainly not ideal conditions! But they decided to stay and said they had a solid hold as well.
We had a nice clear night, but not much color for a sunset.

Here’s our buddies behind us. If our anchor let’s go, we’ll be kissin them in no time! But we’re both over on the inside of the curve, trying to stay out of the maximum current. We’ve watched the whole river, and there is no place where the floating forest is not flowing.

Yikes! I’m not kidding about the floating forest!

Here is the bird’s eye view of where we are. The yellow line was our route through the lock. The dam spillway took off to the right on our downbound journey and comes out below the lock. The blue dot is where we are anchored. Apparently when there isn’t big water, this is a nice calm place to be. If it weren’t for the debris, we wouldn’t mind the current, because it does keep us nice and straight. But the lock dropped us down 37’, so there is pleanty of elevation change for this water to flow down. It just depends on how much water the dam is letting through. Speaking of that, the lockmaster did call us on the radio to let us know that she could see us on the AIS, and would leave a note for the night crew that we were here…. just in case they decided to adjust the spillway to let MORE water out! 😬

We set an anchor alarm and watched the shoreline until it got dark, and we have not budged an inch. Thank goodness. But we’ve had several bonks on the hull as timber goes blasting bay.. The props were really whirling with the water current, so Kenny had to do something downstairs to stop the shafts from spinning. Hopefully we can sleep tonight. And hopefully nothing partially submerged finds its way UNDER the boat to get stuck in the props or struts, or swimstep. Yikes!

We ran the generator and the air conditioning for a couple of hours, so that cooled it off enough to not be uncomfortable. There is absolutely no breeze outside at all, so we’ll run a little fan to move air for our attempted sleeping. Tomorrow morning will be full of surprises, I’m sure.