Touch of Class

TheThis marina is located within a few miles of the Gulf of Mexico.  Across the street there  are several restaurants within walking distance.  We visited our firs onet, Tacky Jacks, on Sunday the 19th.  They had reasonable prices and a deck you could have dinner on.  Here is Gary and a view from the deck

Gary at Tacky Jacks

View from deck

They have their own dock but apparently our boat would never make it in :(.

Here are some pictures of the marina we are at

Fish cleaning station

Benches outside of ships store

Ships Store

The ships store is in the bottom and there is a boat broker on the second floor

View down to Ships Store

This is a view from the parking lot down to the ships store.  The white pillar on the left belongs to a building that houses an electronics company.  Further down the sidewalk on the left, those umbrellas belong to the restaurant that is on the right.  It is called Fisher’s at Orange Beach marina.  They must be pretty popular as they are busy every night.

Sitting area at the restaurant

This is a sitting area, pretty nice huh?  The bushes and tress are covered with blankets because they are talking a freeze tonight.  Snow even.  They don’t know what to do with that down here.  They have closed all the schools for 2 days.

The marina even has a full service yacht works

Saunders

Saunders Yard

This is the enterence to the marina

Enterance to marina

The owner of this marina owns the home that is off to my right in this picture.  This dock curves around and ends on his sand beach.  There are two benches that you can sit on and watch boats go by and dolphins swim by

Dolphin, bottom left. See it’s back 🙂

They have laundry facilities but they are outside.

Washer and Dryer

This is the first time I had to do our laundry outside.  The first time I was doing laundry, one of the guys from the boats here looked at me as I took this picture and was wondering what I was doing.  I told him I had never done my laundry outside before.  I think he thought I was strange.  Good assessment on his part 🙂

You all stay warm, only 3 more months of winter left and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM!

We left Homeport Marina around 8:45.  The channel really narrows down again,

Inter Coastal, very narrow

we are on the Inter-Coastal.  We passed two barges.  They are traveling slow which was good because we passed by them pretty closely.  We even recognized one of the tugs from the Tenn-Tom.  Those guys get around.

We passed by The Warf Marina.

Nordhauven at The Warf Marina

This is one of the places we visited last March to see if we might like to stay there.  They have Condo’s on site

Condo Building at the Warf Marina

Plus a shopping mall, movie theater and a small amusement park.  It did have a few drawbacks though.  You couldn’t grill on your boat and where they wanted to put us was too far away from their one and only grill.  Plus, I don’t like to shop and they are not conducive to bike riding or walking.  Nice boats there though 🙂

As we continued to follow the markers back to the marina, we were surprised at how close to shore they went

Close to Shore

Tight Channel

Of course we were coming in at low tide again so we really had to watch where we were going.  We finally made it to Orange Beach marina.  The marina people had us tie up to M dock because we arrived on Sunday and they are closed.  Here are some pictures from that view

Tied up to M dock

View from the dock

See the palm trees?  You can see that M dock is right along the channel coming into the marina.  Apparently during the summer, this is like a super high-way.  This channel feeds other channels that lead to personal homes so there are a lot of jet skies, fishing boats etc going in and out of that channel.

We feel like we are at a resort.  There is a large ship’s store with many things to offer.

Ship’s Store

You can sit under that roof, they have 3 tables and a TV.  That fish on the wall is a 345 lb marlin.  Wow!

The restaurant they have on site is really nice.  The downstairs is more casual dining and the upstairs is more formal.  The prices on the downstairs dining are not bad.  The marina also offers 2 courtesy cars.  Right now there is no limit on them but we try to get them back within a couple of hours if we borrow them.  We’ll have to go get our van pretty soon.  The marina is filled with about 80% deep sea fishing boats like this one.  Gary wouldn’t be caught dead in that tuna tower :), that is that top thing.  They can drive from up there!

Deep Sea Fishing Boat

I will post some more pictures on the more pictures page and in other blog posts.  Needless to say, Gary is enjoying the maria and so am I.

Gary, enjoying himself

By the time we fueled up and pumped out at Dog River, we didn’t leave the marina till 9:00.  In most of the marinas we stopped at, they sell beer and wine at their ship store.  This place was no exception.  They had some little bottles of a margarita drink that you could buy in a 6 pack.  I figured what the heck, I am going to give it a shot and see if I like it.  So I put the 6 pack on the counter, filled out the forms he needed and paid for the gas and the margarita.  When we were 1/2 down the channel heading back to the shipping channel I realized I forgot my margaritas.  Poop!  Oh well, we are definitely not heading back just for that. Darn.

As we pulled out into the shipping channel we saw a tow with about 12 barges heading the same way we were.  We made it to the shipping channel before he was too close to us so we just kept an eye on him in case he needed to pass us.  In the distance I could see this REALLY big ship coming up the channel, Gary figured it was about 700 feet long

Big boat coming up channel

Now we had another boat to keep an eye on.  While we were making our way slowly along the shipping channel, Gary’s phone rang.  It was Dog River Marina.  The guy there realized I had forgotten my Margarita and was wondering what he should do or if he should give me a credit.  I thanked him for calling and just told him to give it to someone who liked them.  I was surprised he called, I would have just drank them.  Like finding money on the side walk, finders keepers.  We’ll be stopping there next spring, I should of told him to hang on to them till we got back in April 🙂

As we were driving along, trying to figure out the markers and whether or not they were a mile apart or not, that big boat just kept gaining on us and the tow boat was falling further behind.

He’s gaining on us.

We knew he was going to catch up to us.  Look at all the water he was pushing.  See that white strip in the picture above?  That is water that he is pushing.  Here is a close up

Big boat pushing water

As he kept gaining on us it was apparent he was going to go between us and our port side.  As we had been traveling down the shipping channel I noticed a few boats that were fishing very close to the edge of the channel.  They were dragging a net behind them, I assume it was gathering fish in it.  At the time the big boat was getting really close to us, one of those fishing boats was also on our port side, close to the edge of the channel.  I watched with shock because it looked like the big boat was going to run over that fishing boat.  That fishing boat wasn’t moving to get out of the big guys way…at all!

Big boat bow

I should of taken some pictures but I was so sure the big boat was either going to hit the fishing boat or swamp it that I just watch what was happening.  Luckily, they missed each other.  You can see how close the big boat came to us

Big Boat close to us

You can see the side of our boat and how far away the big boat was.  That was scary.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from his waves but they weren’t bad.  First time for me on such a big body of water.  Everything is new and exciting and different.  So different from river traveling.  See this bridge here (see the dark spot on the picture?  I apparently have something on the lens of my camera.  Poop.  I tried wiping off the lens but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.  Any suggestions from anyone as to how to get rid of this???)

Bridge

Gary figured it was about 25 miles away but you can’t even see the land on either side of it.  As we would look at the boats in front of us, we had that curvature of the earth thing going on again.  There would be a gap between the boat and the water, the boat would look like it was floating in thin air.  We saw a few oil rigs in the bay, a “crew” boat that was driving between the rigs.  You could tell he knew his way around the bay :).  We also saw this house

House in Bay

That is a real get away!  I wonder what his mailing address is?

Well it was further than we thought to Orange Beach so we ended up stopping at Homeport Marina.  This marina has a restaurant, gift shop, a sandy area, and some other things connects to the marina called Lulu’s.

Lulu’s

They have floating docks there so we didn’t have to worry about the tide.  Their dockage was steep though.   The dockage was $100 a night but they gave us $25 BoatUS discount but after they added taxes, an electric charge and a hotel tax of about $10, the bottom line was $94.20.  Most we’ve paid yet.  We did see dolphins in the marina, Gary was able to get a few shots

Dolphin going

Gone

I got a camera that takes multiple shots as long as you hold down the button, without that, we never would have gotten these shots.  Those dolphins are quick 🙂

Here is the boat at Homeport, pretty ain’t she?

Touch of Class at Homeport Marina

At least the bay was relatively flat today.  We should make it to Orange Beach by tomorrow so TTFN and it’s Friday night so a little wine is calling my name!

We left the anchorage at 7:11 this morning.  It was 45°, again, we stayed warm all night.  The cat always sleeps with me at night, his added warmth helped keep me warm, Gary was on his own :).

We got both anchors up today without much trouble.  Gary had to “strong-arm” the back anchor up.  Those $75 head sets we bought have really come in handy when ever we dock or anchor.  Worth every penny!

See these smoke stacks from a power plant?

Power Plant

We passed those stacks 5 times!  Gives you some idea how many bend there are in this river.

When we got to mile 20 on the Tenn-Tom, our Garmin started looking like this

Garmin at mile 20

We lost our sailing line, the mile markers and any info about what we were passing.

Luckily, we had downloaded Navionic’s for our I-pad.  For about $50 I would suggest any boater download it.  The detail on it is wonderful and as long as your I-pad is cell phone capable (so it has GPS), you don’t need to have internet coverage for it once you download all the maps.  Here is what Navionic’s looked like

Navionic’s

The shoreline changed quite a bit the closer we got to Mobile Bay.  It almost started looking swampy.  Here is what the shoreline looked like as we got closer to Mobile Bay

Shoreline

We finally arrived at Mobile Bay at 12:00.  We saw our 1st dolphin at 12:30.  Cool!  We are really down south now 🙂  This is really a “working” bay.  Many massive ships and navels ships.  I took a bunch of pictures, I’ll post some of them under the pictures page.  The Bay is really shallow if you don’t stay in the channel.  We stayed in the shipping lane and then found the channel marker to Dog River.  You had to follow the channel markers very closely as it was really shallow going into the marina.  Of course we always seem to be coming into the marinas as low tide which makes it extra tricky, but of course if we make it in at low tide, we’ll be able to make it out.  They are green and red markers are on telephone poles.  Each one is numbered.  Some of them have lights but after listening to the Coast Guard update, quite a few of them don’t have working lights.  The wind can also be a factor.  Today it was blowing out of the north which also blows the water out of the marina.  We had to be very careful when traveling thru the channel and made sure to stay in the middle.  We tied up to their transient dock.  Dockage cost us nothing because they had a “Looper” deal that if you took on fuel, your dockage was free.  Gary didn’t want to add anymore fuel to the boat but at $3.61 a gallon, we could hardly pass it up so we put on 200 gallons and got a free pump out too.  We were able to walk around the marina and look at all the boat, in and out of the water.  I have uploaded some of the pictures on the picture page.

OMG, look….is that who we think it is?

Problem Boat

That is the boat we met when we stopped at Green Turtle, the one that had all the troubles.  We had to check.  Apparently they were coming into this marina and the wind was blowing and it pushed them out of the channel.  They ran aground and BoatUS had to go get them (they certainly have been getting their monies worth from their policy :)).  The people from the marina told the owner of the boat he really needed to add more fuel to get to his final destination of Cape Coral and they also told him he should hire a professional Captain.  I agree, this poor guy really needs some help if he wants to get his boat to Florida.  Apparently he has docked his boat for now and will come back in the spring and try again.  We’ll see if we run into him again.

We ran into this fellow when we were walking around.  He’s the marina dog.

Marina Dog

His name is Diesel.  They told us he was friendly but because people are scared of such a big dog, they put a muzzle on him.  I think he looks a lot scarier with the muzzle on him and with his shock collar.  He reminds me of that guy in the movie Hannibal  He was very friendly but very big.  Once you started petting him he didn’t want you to stop.

We were able to walk around the marina.  They do quite a bit of boat repair here and there were a lot of cool boats in the area.  I have posted some of those boats in the More Pictures page.

Here are a couple of pictures from night time

Marina at Night

Another Night picture

Well better sign off, big day tomorrow, our final run to Orange Beach Marina.

We woke up early this morning, it was 24° and there was frost on the dock and the boat. Gary tied two lines, one I could just release from the bow, the other was a mid line that he hoped would just slide off when he pulled forward.  I certainly didn’t want to get off on the dock with the frost on it, I would have for sure ended up on the river.  We started off, I got the line off the cleat on the bow but dam, the middle line didn’t slide off.  I shout at him “we are still tied to the dock!”  He backs off and it comes off, whew!  I was hoping we didn’t pull the dock away from shore, that would be really bad :).

We got into Coffeville lock right away.  All those tows from last night must have made it thru during the night.  While we go thru the locks we see people have made up stickers with their boat names on them and then they stick them to the bollards and the sides of the lock.  I saw one today that said “Adventures Before Dementia”, ain’t that the truth. The Lock Master asked for our documentation number.  That is the first time any lock has done that.  This is our last lock until we come back up.  I can put away my locking gloves

Locking Gloves

These help keep my hands clean and warm.  You’d be surprised how cold the wall of the lock gets when the water temperature is in the 40’s and 50’s.

We have seen a few large items thrown over the bank.  We just saw a mattress on the bank of the river

Mattress on Bank

Crappy picture, but you can kind of see that little blue thing.  That’s the mattress.  It is almost like they are tossing their junk over the bank just waiting for high water to take it down river.  That is one way to get rid of your big trash I guess 😦

We have also seen a few abandoned businesses along the way.  Here is a picture of Lone Star Cement Company.  They note that they are abandoned right on the charts.

Abandoned Company

Here is a section called “Lovers Leap”

Lovers Leap

We have seen more tows today.  You should “announce” yourself when you come into sharp curves so other vessels know you are coming.  Here is a picture of our Garmin

Curves on the Garmin

Wow!  No wonder you have to let others know where you are, not good to run into those tows on the corners.   Been there, done that 🙂 This is a picture of Newman Bend and Horseshoe Bend, mile marker 70 – 74. 

One thing I have noticed as Gary and I travel together.  You really get to know your partners bathroom trips.  You can’t just slip off to another part of the house or office and do your business without anyone noticing.  Nope.  You have to let the other person know where your going so they don’t think you fell overboard.  “Gotta use the head”, “Going to see a man about a horse”, “Need to get rid of some coffee” etc, etc.  Not too many secrets on the boat.

We finally arrived at our anchorage about 2:30

Anchorage looking out bow

Anchorage from Stern

We had to tie a stern anchor for this anchorage.  There aren’t many places to anchor between Bobby’s Fish Camp and Dog River Marina on Mobile Bay.  This was a really nice anchorage.  Our anchor alarm didn’t go off at all, a first.  This must be a freeway of sorts for small fishing boats and 3 whizzed by us early in the morning before we left anchor.  They didn’t even have lights on them.  I suppose they can see better in the dark that way. Better hit the hay, we get to Mobile Bay tomorrow.  That will be scary and exciting at the same time.

We were up at 6 this morning hoping to get an early start.  We were close enough to the lock that we could call them and find out if there were any barges going thru.  Unfortunately there were 2 but the nice Lock Master said he call us when the barges were thru his lock, so we stood by on channel 14 waiting for him to hail us.  About 8:30 he gave us the go ahead to come to the lock.

Lock, no wickets

Another pic of damn

As you can see by these pictures, this lock has no wickets or nothing really to stop you if you lost your engine and were close to the wrong side of the damn.  Whoa Nelly!  That would not be fun and would be a hell of a ride.

We thought we might have to shorten our trip today as we got such a late start but there is quite a current here.  We are traveling at 11.4 knots, that is 12.65 MPH at our usual 13 RPM.  We have both engines going today to give us a little boost to get us to Bobby’s Fish Camp, our next marina destination.

We could tell we were getting closer to tropical weather because we kept seeing more and more of these palm bushes in the forests.

Palm Plants

We were traveling at quite a good clip, we passed 2 south bound tows and 3 north bound tows.  Unfortunately we passed two of those north bound tows right at a sharp curve.  That is quite the experience.  Naturally I was driving again and as I round one of the corners, Gary noticed the barge first and jumped up.  He called the Tow Captain, found out if he wanted us on his “ones” or his “twos”, told me where to drive as he gave it some gas.  I just steered the boat, Gary did the hard stuff.  For both of the turns we ended up going on the tow’s “ones” so we were on the inside of the curve with not much room between the barge and the shore.  Luckily it was deep and we didn’t have to worry about hitting bottom, just floating logs.  We made it past both of them without much trouble. Gets your heart rate up though, that is for sure.

We did see this fun water slide at someone’s house.  Looks like someone was having a party

Water Slide

We made it to Bobby’s Fish Camp by 4:30.  $76.50 per night, there is now electric on the dock :). That was quite an experience getting into the dock with the current as strong as it was.   Luckily there was another boat there and the guy and his wife came out to grab our lines.  The current was really swift there.  I never could have done it without their help.

Canadian Boat

This is the boat they were driving.  Their story is he is still working.  They are making the loop.  They come down and travel on the boat for a few weeks then they go back and he goes back to work for a month or so.  They were also at Aqua while we were there. Apparently they hit something and had to have their shafts repaired then they left their boat at Aqua for a while while they went back to Canada.  There was another boat tied to the dock here.  It was a catamaran.  If you don’t know what that is, here is a picture

Catamarane

Granted, his boat was not this nice but……apparently he had a really bad motorcycle accident, had 5 surgeries on his knee (he even pulled up his pant leg and showed us), and got “blood money” so he could retire and buy this boat.  He had never owned a boat before. He had been at Bobby’s since the week of Christmas because he has two outboard and he hit something and he was waiting for the part.  The part had to come all the way from England.  He had just got it installed the day we arrived and he was going to try to head up north.  He was going to have a hell of a time bucking those currents.  See how people just tell you their life story practically?  Again, we have met such interesting people :).

Bobby’s Fish Camp is pretty much just a dock.

Our boat at Bobby’s

They do have a few cabins and room for a few RV’s.  They also have a restaurant that is open Thursday thru Sunday and they apparently have the best catfish dinner around.  We arrived on Wednesday, so we’ll never know :(.  During the night,

Tow at night

there were 3 tows that pushed their barges up to the bank and waited.  There was a lock right around the corner.  Why were they waiting?  Was the lock broken?  Was it shut down for the night?  We tried to listed on the marine band to see if there was any chatter about what was going on but I waited too long.  No news.  Well, I hope they are gone by tomorrow morning or it will be a long wait while they get thru the lock.

We left our anchorage around 7:00, the temperature this morning was 39°.  We both stayed surprisingly warm last night.  We don’t like to run the generator during the night, don’t want to be asphyxiated, you know.

It was foggy in the morning but we got right into our first and only lock of the day.

Fog

We have noticed with most of the locks on the TennTom, the Lock Master gives you instructions, enter at slow speed, whoever is working the lines should have a Coast Guard approved life jacket on, notify him when we are secure.  Gary and I have always made it a habbit to wear our life jacket when out on deck.  Better to be safe than sorry.  We have also noticed that right before they drop the water, they sound a siren.  Sounds like an air raid siren.

With the bollards in these locks, Gary always told me never to tie the boat to the bollard, you just wrap your line around the bollard and then loop the line thru the cleat on the boat

Tie to the Bollard

That way if the bollard doesn’t move, your boat won’t be hanging from the line if you can’t cut it.  Well today I saw first hand what he was talking about.  After the Lock Master sounded the alarm, our boat started going down but the bollard wasn’t moving.  I waited a little bit to make sure it wasn’t moving before I told Gary.  He called the Lock Master, the Lock Master said he would stop the drop and we should move to another bollard.  I removed our line (we tie off to the cleat that is in the middle of our boat), by the time the rear of our boat was next to the bollard, the bollard was probably as high as our roof.  Suddenly……it dropped.  Swoosh!  Splash!  The bollard almost went totally under water!  Geez Louise!  That could have caused some real damage to the boat not to mention I’d have to go change my shorts!  Another lesson learned in the locks.

We passed a town called Epes, AL where there were some white cliffs on the banks.  Very pretty

White Sand Cliff

More White Sand cliff

Smokie has been getting more and more comfortable on the boat

Smokie

Here he is enjoying some sunshine :).

As you travel down, you can see along the river where the bank has just given way and people have lost structures.  Here, looks like someone lost their shed.

Bye Bye Shed

I wonder if that is covered by insurance?

We are staying at the Demopolis Yacht Basin marina, $69.38.

Marina

Very nice marina.  Most of it is covered.  We were able to do some laundry here too.  Not too bad $1.25 per load.  That is something that can vary, from $1.00 a load to $2.00 a load.  We had to go to the laundry mat when we stayed at Aqua right before we left because they shut off the water to the bathrooms and laundry.  That was expensive :(.

The have a golf cart at the marina you can use to get over to the gas dock where we had to go to pay.  They told us to go ahead and use it.  Ooooooh, now that sounds like fun :).  I took the wheel and we started off, as we drove we saw the road we should take to get to the gas dock but with the abundance of rain they have had and the fact that there were big dump trucks working that area, the road looked like fresh gooey mud.  No way was I going to drive thru that!  I’m not getting out and pushing the cart thru that when it got stuck!  So I took the side of the 45 MPH road.  We got to the gas dock and paid and found out we were not to take the golf cart on the road because it wasn’t street legal, whoops!  So Gary drove back to the marina.  When we got to the muddy part he just kicked it.  Mud was flying everywhere but we made it across.  No mud on us but the cart was a mess.   We just parked it in it’s spot and sneaked away.

We had an early night because we had a big day tomorrow so we hit the rack early.  Night Night.

We left Columbus Marina this morning at 7:00, 45°.  It is dark, rainy, cold and windy.  It reminds me of the movie Deliverance.  I can almost hear the banjos.  Look, there is snow in the river

Snow on Buoy

Just kidding, it really foam.  We see that quite a bit on this river, especially on the downward run after the damn.  On this stretch of river we saw quite a few trees with three yellow marks on the

Marked Trees

I am assuming they must be marked to be cut down???  I also saw this tree that housed a bunch of birds

Crap load of birds

If feeling like Deliverance wasn’t bad enough, now I feel like the movie The Birds.  I better cover my eyes!  Ahhhhhhhh!

We noticed that it seemed some of the higher banks were covered with cement.  We assume it is to stop erosion.  Kind of weird.

Cement on Bank

There is still a lot of floating debris in this still muddy river.  As we travel down, our only damn today, the Tom Beville, was not a pleasant experience.  I would go so far at to say it really sucked! The bollard we tied to had no little horns sticking out which made it easier for the rope to stay in place while you were holding on.

Bollard with no horns

Bollard with horns

See how the bollard with horns has something to keep the rope from slipping off?  Well the bollard in this damn was like the first picture but the little lip wasn’t as big as the one pictured.  The bollard was also lower than the side of our boat (some of them are higher which is easier to keep the rope tied to).  It was rainy and the rope started to slip off the bollard after the Lockmaster started to let the water out.  OMG!  I was yelling for Gary, pounding on the door, telling him that the rope was slipping off the bollard.  I looked and he wasn’t at the controls.  REALLY!  What a time to have to go to the bathroom!  Finally he got back and was able to keep the boat in position to keep the rope from slipping off.  I was none to happy.  Cold, wet and grumpy, not a good way for your only crew to be.  Luckily for the Captain I don’t stay mad for long (contrary to popular belief at K&L :))

Tonight we are anchoring out at a place called Supter Recreation Area at the 270th mile marker.  We arrived early, around 2:00.  It was really shallow coming in, our depth alarm went off a few times and it showed a depth of 3.9 on the Garmin.  We are hoping the water doesn’t drop too much during the night. Once we made it in and got anchored, it was pretty nice.  There was a ramp there and a park, so there were a few lights we could keep sight on during the night to make sure we weren’t floating around too much.  A rather windy storm popped up around 10:30, the anchor held and all was well.  It always takes me a while to get back to sleep after something like that.  Hopefully we’ll have a better day tomorrow.

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 🙂

We left this morning at 7:10, it was 52°.  We had to wait a little for the first damn of the day, Jamie Whitter.  It was an 84 foot drop.

84 ft drop

When we got out of the lock there was fog.  We had to use our radar, this is the first time we’ve had to use it all trip.  Well we finally ran into some bad luck.  The next two damns were only a short distance apart and there was a tow in front of us.  Crap, we’ll have to wait for him to lock down thru both damns.  At least he is able to fit his entire load into the lock in one shot, that will save some time.

The next lock we bobbed out in the channel and waited our turn.  At least we were able to ease drop on the tow Captain and the Lockmaster.  It sounded like there were old friends so we listened to them talk about their lives in general for a hour.  That was at least entertaining for us if not a little naughty on our part :).

Once we got into the damn we found this on the bollard

Jenny was here

I don’t know who Jenny was but she showed up in all our locks from here to the last one.  I hope she had a good trip down.

Some of the shoreline looked like they had let the water out of the river.

Low Water

It kind of reminded me of the Chippewa Flowage in Wisconsin when we used to snowmobile and they let the water out of the river and there were just these stumps of trees sticking out everywhere.

We ended up at Midway marina.  That was a little touchy getting in there.  There were weeds everywhere and our low water alarm went off when we were in the channel.  We got the boat in and paid $53.50 for the dockage there.  Kind of an interesting place.

Cool Truck

Have you ever seen a truck like this before?  I think they were using it as a storage shed along with transportation 🙂

Then they had a work boat with a recliner on it.  Something maybe Sunnyside might want to look into for the guys.

Work Boat

At night, there was a bunch of smoke coming from the other side of the marina, and I mean a lot of smoke.  We trucked over there to see what was on fire.  Turns out they were just having a camp fire.  Hey people, don’t you know there is a no fire warning out?  Crazy people!  Well, it is Saturday night!

There are a couple of boats here tied up in front of us, one is a Carver and the other is Detterling.

Dettling Boat Fredricka Lady

Both are doing the loop.  They asked us to travel with them tomorrow and we agreed, we’ll see how that goes.