Meandering Magees: Sweet Home Alabama

Day 51 - Thursday, October 27

1488 miles

True North and our travel companion boat Lucky Ducks left our anchorage on Monday morning at 8:15 local time. We had one lock to go through before Demopolis - the Howard Heflin, with a 36 ft. drop. We got to the lock about 10, but waited in the lock for two boats that were a few miles behind us. We’ve been on that end of the situation where a lock waited for us so we were OK with it. Fortunately, there was no wind so keeping the boat lined up in the lock was not a problem. One of the boats we waited for was Miss My Money. Isn’t that a great name? He told us it was the name of the boat when he bought it, and after he did all the repairs and upgrades he decided the name fit and kept it!

The drop in the Heflin Lock went fast as we went down in a continuous motion. In other locks, we would drop a foot and stop, drop a foot and stop.

We pulled into Kingfisher Bay Marina in Demopolis at 3:30. The dock master - Anna Marie was standing on the dock, radio in hand, talking us through the entrance channel (where dredging was going on). She was very nice and ran a very tight ship - or should I say marina! Kingfisher Bay is right next to Demopolis Yacht Basin and has the same owner. The Yacht Basin has seen better days, but the fuel dock is still located there. And the ice chest. Karen and I took a courtesy golf cart over to the Yacht Basin fuel dock to buy a bag of ice. Kingfisher has new docks and more modern facilities. We stayed 2 nights. Tuesday night we went to dinner with the couple from Lucky Ducks at the Red Barn. All 6 of us crammed into the Buick Century courtesy car that had to be back by 6 and the restaurant didn’t open until 5.

Demopolis is another staple on the Loop - everyone stops there. It marks the halfway point on the Tenn-Tom Waterway to Mobile. And it is the last marina until Mobile Bay, some 216 miles away.

We called the Demopolis Lock on Wednesday morning and found there was tow traffic that had priority so we waited an hour and then took off. It is nice to be able to do that and wait at the dock instead of idling in the water in front of a lock.

The lock master blows a whistle when the doors are closed and the drop or lift begins and again as a signal when the doors open. We have heard whistles that sound like the noon and 10 pm sirens in Ludington. And we have heard short blasts that go on and on as if a little kid has his hand on the buzzer. I prefer the familiar sound of home.

This time we were the first of 8 boats heading out of Kingfisher Bay at 7:30 am. The Leader of the Pack. Can’t you hear the motorcycles revving in your head? (that’s when I fell for the leader of the pack.) Maybe you have to be over 50 to get that reference to the 1964 hit “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las. When Greg turned around and saw the boats behind us, he had a more current musical reference -

“Loopin’ in the USA” - a take-off of the Beach Boys classic “Surfin’ USA”.

This stretch of the Black Warrior/Tombigbee Waterway was very sparsely populated. We traveled a little farther than originally planned and anchored with Lucky Ducks at Turkey Creek. This really wasn’t a side creek or cutoff from the waterway. It was just a wide stretch with a sandy beach and good depths right up to a few yards from shore. We kept our AIS transmitter on all night so any passing tow barges would see us off to the side. Our entertainment that night was watching two middle-aged guys in a small Boston Whaler type boat pull up to the shore and make camp. They struggled a bit with getting the tent up. Then they came over the radio to ask if either of us had any bug spray. Lucky Ducks did not but we did, and offered them a can. They climbed back into their boat to come the short distance to get it, but had difficulty getting the boat off the shore. That took a while - more entertainment for us. They finally got it free, motored over and we gave them brats for dinner. The ketchup and mustard got passed over to them. We told them to keep the bug spray but not the condiments!

We were ready to leave the anchorage on Thursday morning by 7:30 local time but fog kept our anchor down until about 8:30 when a passing tow assured us the visibility was good and getting better.

Our original planned 3 nights out on anchor between Demopolis and Mobile turned into 2 nights with long days of running. We felt bad passing up Bobby’s Fish Camp, a 150 ft. dock that has power and water for those that get there first. Once the 150 ft. are taken up, the rafting off of boats begins and at peak Looper season, rafting 3 and 4 deep is not unheard of. Bobby’s is like Hoppies on the Mississippi, but without Fern’s briefings.

Going down the river with Karen is like traveling with a botany book and Audubon guidebook as she knows her fauna and fowl. I’m learning a lot! It’s all God’s creation and it is beautiful.

Coffeeville was our last lock on this leg of the Loop - the western inland rivers. When we were lowered the 33 feet, and the doors opened at 10:35 local time, we were at sea level! (To be honest, sea level didn’t look any different from my position on the bow than the other elevations.) We had dropped 414 ft while on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Even though we were still 116 miles from Mobile Bay, we would now start dealing with tides. This was a woo-hoo moment for the crew of True North. One source of anxiety before beginning the Loop was the locks. (would we know what to do, could we keep the boat straight and tight to the wall, how do you tie up to a bollard, and what exactly is a bollard, etc.) We came out of Coffeeville having slayed that dragon. We’ll stare it in the face with the confidence gained from experience again in upstate New York in the spring of 2018 - God willing.

Our long day on Thursday ended when we set our anchor in the bottom of the Tensaw River at 6:15 local time, just before dark. The Tensaw feeds into the waterway (now called the Mobile River) so we went several hundred yards upstream to spend the night.

The big milestone moment will come on Friday when we enter Mobile Bay. As Mike said, all of his planning and charts went as far as Mobile. I think this means a trip to the marine store for more charts! Just as Coffeeville was our last lock, our entrance into Mobile Bay will mark the end of being on inland rivers until the Hudson. After Mobile Bay we will be traveling on the intracoastal waterway in the panhandle until we cross the Gulf to Dunedin, Florida, near Tarpon Springs.

When we left back in September, I don’t think any of us thought we would do these 1488 miles, plus the 40 more to Mobile, at 10 mph. (We do crank it up every now and then for a few minutes to get the carbon out of the engines.) That is not in the mindset of boating on Lake Michigan. But our prop issue on our second day turned out to be a blessing (albeit an expensive one!) as we were forced to travel at that speed. We discovered we liked it and continued at that pace after the props were replaced. Our trip is an adventure, not a race. And we are enjoying it!