We left at 6:45 this morning with our two new friends.  It is 30° this morning.  Chilly!  There was frost on our bumpers again

Frost on bumpers

We all travel to the first damn and lock thru.  After we come out, the Carver takes off, he doesn’t want to travel as slow as Frederica Lady and us.  We end up catching up to the Carver at the next lock and they are holding the lock for us.  So much for all that speed 🙂  The three of us travel together to the next damn.  I guess it just doesn’t pay to go fast when there are 2 other boats trailing you 😦

I have found that the water in the TennTom is really muddy.  I feel like I am back on the Mississippi.  There are also floating dead hybisqus and logs.  I was told us “Northerners” like to have the floating hybisqus, which have pretty purple flowers in the summer, float in our ponds.  From all the dead plants in the TennTom, they must be pretty abundant down here.

Muddy TennTom

All the junk in the water has made travel a little more difficult as we really need to pay attention so we don’t run into anything.  You’d think that driving would be easy but there are so many things to look at….the Garmin, to make sure your close to the sailing line, the buoys, to make sure you stay in the middle, all the gauges for the engines, to make sure the engines aren’t over heating and the river itself, to make sure you don’t run over anything.  Kind of stressful.

We did see this kind of different waterfall….sort of…

Waterfall

We stayed at Columbus marina, $58.50, with the couple from Fredericka Lady, Charlie and DJ.  We ended up having dinner with them.  Nice people.  They are doing the loop but they are both still working at the restaurant they own.  They end up going back home and leaving the boat for a few months at a time.  It will take them a while to finish.

One thing we have learned, there sure are a lot of nice people on our travels.

We are going to leave tomorrow, rain and cold is predicted, so Charlie and DJ are going to hang out at Columbus and sight see.  Hopefully we don’t regret our decision 🙂