Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Time to head South again

The painted Bluff on the TN River heading down stream.  Well, we didn't make it to Chattanooga as original planned, weather turned cold and storms were forecasted for the next 2 or 3 days which would of been our travel days to Chattanooga, so, we decided to turn around and head south saving ourselves a week of travel.  And since we also have another change of plans, which is to go home for Thanksgiving, we needed the extra time to get to Mobile Al.  where we hope to leave SweetPea and head back to Massachusetts for the holiday.



This is the Wilson Lock, to give you an idea of the size of some of these locks, pictured here is ErikaLin who is a 40' Mainship and the boat behind her is The Good Life,  who is a 70 footer and owned by a New England Patriot, they are dwarfed by the size of the lock.  Also in this lock are 5 other boats all 40+ feet, this lock dropped us down 93 feet and all the remaining locks from here to Mobile will be lowering us down to sea level. Which totals a 518 feet we need to drop before we reach Mobile and more than 450 miles.

A rare photo of Just Jim and I, this was taken in Florence Alabama




We are now on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom) which links the Tennessee River and Mobile Bay it will take us 234 miles to the Bay.  After 12 years of construction, at a total cost of 2 Billion the Tenn-Tom was completed and officially opened for commerce on January 10,1985.


The scenery can be quite spectacular, especially as the trees hold on to the beautiful fall color that still remains here.  This was the view in our anchorage for the night with NautiNell at Five fingers in Bay Springs.






Well not all trees are able to hold onto their leaves, more reason to head south!







We are now at Midway Marina in Fulton Mississippi, we will leave here in the morning (early) and hope to reach Columbus MS with daylight 5 locks and 60 miles.  We hope the lock masters are kind to us.

Side Note*  That boat in the lock with us "The Good Life" When we got to our next stop it was in the marina,  we were surprised to see it as she travels very fast and was a day ahead of us, and since it was being delivered to Florida by a hired captain even stranger it was sitting.  Well today we were reading that the NE patriot that owned her has been released from the pats, and the boat was sitting at the marina because the hired captain went aground in the fog hmmm, not a good week for Albert Haynesworth or "The Good Life"