Our last week as river rats?

We have spent nearly 3 months on the river system from Chicago to Mobile.  Too long?  Long enough is my answer!  This homemade sailing vessel (CharlieBrown) made of bamboo, plastic bottles and tarps was heading downbound, and barely moving, wonder where he was trying to get too.  Wherever it was it surely was slow going. 

Later in the same day we came across this raft named SlantyShanty, we have seen a few posts and pics of it on other blogs, on board is a young couple in their early 20's they are heading to New Orleans.  As we were passing by they had a VHF radio and asked if we had seen anyother rafts or homemade crafts up river, we mentioned the sailboat at mile marker 145 and they said they were trying to keep tabs on him.  They had last seen him at about the same mm a week ago.  This raft in the last week was averaging about 15 miles a day and was now about 100 miles from the sailboat.  An interesting journey for sure. They are called river rats by the tows, and not an uncommon site.  

Here is a look at our chartplotter as we meander down the Tenn-Tom.

This last week on the river is without marinas for over 200 miles so we have been on the hook for the past week rafting with others we are traveling with.  Here is Barb and Ken from Dallas TX on LoopDreams and Lynda and Bob from Mystic CT. on ErikaLin at one of our anchorages along the way.

Another night we rafted with our friends Linda and Jeff on Jeremiah along with 4 other boats, once all tied together it time for the pups to get to land.

That evening as always, its cocktail hours, we had a 5 boat raft on this night.  Lifestyles, CatNAround, Jeremiah, SweetPea and NautiNell. 

This is our first site of civilization, Mobile AL we have been without phone or internet for most of the week.

We traveled down the shipping canal in Mobile this is just about all we saw.

More of the same.

Ahhh, finally Mobile Bay, from here we cross the bay to our destination for the next week and where we will spend Thanksgiving with 34 other loopers in Fairhope Alabama. 

across the bay we go, it couldn't of been any smoother.

Land Ho!  Eastern Shores Marina in Fairhope.

We are very happy to be off the rivers and back in salt water.  We Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Its always something !

The Plan is to head on out of Demopolis tomorrow morning at sunrise, Hopefully there will be NO fog and the lock will be up working and waiting for us.  The Demopolis lock was down most of the day today for repairs. There is quite a group of us here, we just hope we get in the first lock down of the day from the marina.  Since Alabama received so much rain in the last few days we are hoping the water levels will be up enough to allow us to get into Bashi Creek and anchor for the night, if not it will be a long day of over 90 miles to Bobby's Fish Camp.

Since we have spent so much time here Jim took the opportunity to install the Hailer he had on the boat.

Of course SOMEONE needed to supervise and make sure everything was lined up.

Its always something right!  As Jim was enjoying his morning coffee and chatting with Lynda on ErikaLin they both smelt something burning.  Yup, that's our cable connection, luckily Jim was where he was and it happened during the day.  I don't even want to think what could of happened if it was night and everyone was asleep.

The electrical cords were resting on this cooler.  Jim replaced all the connections on the cord and took the time to clean the cockpit out and reorganised everything.  All is good now.

Weather delays, shallow anchorages and no marinas OH My!

Well here we sit, waiting for a weather window to open up, but things have gotten even more complicated in the last 24 hours. 

We are in Demopolis Al. located 225 miles or so from Mobile Bay,  from here to Mobile there is only one dock in which to tie up to,  NO marinas and only 2 places for a boat our size to drop an anchor, however, due to low pool (3 feet below low) last night we received a call from a group of boats that left the marina here.   The call came at 8 30PM, BrownEyedGirl and 3 others had just reached Bobby's Fish Camp 97 miles away, it took them 10 hours.  It was reported that the anchorages were too shallow for their boats to get into so they had no other choice but to go on another 20+ miles to Bobby's.  WOW, luckily there is only 1 lock but the weather was not the greatest yesterday with wind and rain on top of it all it must of been an extremely long day.. 
Today weather calls for rain, thunder and lightening, strong wind warnings severe at times with possible hail and tornado warnings!  OH MY!  I believe we will stay right where we are thank you.  However, when we do leave we are looking at a 97 miles, at least thanks to the report from BrownEyedGirl we can plan on it and pick up the pace as to NOT get stuck traveling in the dark, and I guess we will be blowing the carbon out of SweetPea.

Thanks for the heads up!

Today the 8 boats that are here will ponder over the situation, everyone can travel at different speeds some faster than others, there are 3 who are only able of about 8 mph max and the rest range from a max of 12 to 20mph. Since the 3 slower boats are true trawlers they MAY be able to use an anchorage because their props are protected.  Throw in a lock which takes 30 mins on a good day and whatever barges and no wake zones we come across, especially on some of the hairpins turns we will encounter, hmmm looks to be an interesting trip and some serious fuel burn.  Sure hope the lockmaster is good to us.

Half way down the Tenn-Tom and back in Alabama

We left Midway marina Thursday with the intention of traveling to Columbus a 60miles day with 4 locks, well it turned out to be more than was possible due to waiting on the locks and the sun setting earlier.  We ended up passing up Columbus and ended the day in Aberdeen.  It was an interesting entry way though very well marked.

Erika Lin leaving Aberdeen MS, I love this picture, it looks as though they are cruising into the trees, but they were actually following the markers. 

This is the office for the marina at Pirates Cove our next stop.

On Saturday we set out once again this time bypassing Columbus and headed into Pirates Cove a 51 mile day (trying to make up some time) the locks were much better to us on this day. Pirates Cove, though not much of a marina the people were extremely helpful and it was a quiet night for us, dinner on board and early to bed. We have been traveling with ErickaLin for the last week or so and today we picked up another boat while at Pirates Cove, Ken and Barb on LoopDreams they too were at the rendezvous at Joe Wheeler but we had not really met them until now, the 3 of us would be traveling together for the next few days and upon leaving this marina our next night would be anchoring as there are no marinas for over 90 miles.

Potty time for the pups

Party Time for the people
ErikaLin on SweetPea with LoopDreams
at our anchorage for the night Sumter Rec Area



Sunset at the anchorage



Sunrise the next morning

Theres LoopDreams
Ken and Barb
cruising by Sugar Bluffs

ErikaLin
Bob and Lynda

We are now in Demopolis Alabama and will be here for 2 nights as once again weather is not looking very promising. There are at least 15 Looper boats here, its like old home week..
When we do leave here we have 213 miles to Mobile AL and no real marinas along the way so we will be anchoring out, it should take 4 days we are hoping to make it in 3 we will see how that goes.

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"

Taking a side trip to Chattanooga

This is our first side trip since June, its a 190 mile trek up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga and we are told its well worth the trip as you travel through the gorge surrounded by mountains and with the fall foliage at its peak its spectacular.  We are now half way and it is beautiful though a bit chilly in the mornings ( 40s) today it was 67.  We spent a couple of extra days in Scottsboro AL and took the courtesy car out for lunch we also went to the Unclaimed Baggage to see what they had, a trip to Wally World and back to the marina.  We are planning to leave here tomorrow morning and continue on up the river.  Since the days are getting shorter and it's been foggy in the mornings we haven't been leaving as early as we would like, tomorrow we may anchor out since its 85 miles to Chattanooga and we will have 1 lock. 
Here are the pics from the day.................


Happy Halloween !

AGLCA Looper Rendezvous Until we met again

We are on the move again, we left Joe Wheeler State Park after a week long stay for the AGLCA Rendezvous. At the Rendezvous there were a total of 57 boats that came in, all in one stage or another of the loop. Boats of all shapes and sizes with homeports from all over the US, Canada, England and Australia. There were Gold loopers (those who have finished the loop), White loopers (those who are in the process of the loop) and people who drove in and stayed at the lodge who are in the planning process or Veteran loopers who came as speakers. The meeting had more than 200 in attendance and was a great time to meet up with people all with the same goal, of doing the Great American Loop. For us, the fall rendezvous is a great place to meet alot of newer loopers, those who will be doing most of their loop in the next 12 months. And a gathering place to catch up with people we have seen or traveled with at some point along the way. We consider ourselves 3/4 looped, we will be finished when we cross our wake. which for us will be in Stuart Florida. We then change out our white burgee (flag) for a Gold burgee.


The sad part of completing the loop is, we are beginning to lose people as they this adventure comes to a close, especially from here on down to Mobile, as we will then lose those who head home to Texas, LA, AL and FL. Many of them however, are planning to continue cruising after they take a break, do further upgrades etc. So to those fine folks I will say, till we meet again! As for everyone else we move onward, head south to the warm salty waters of Florida and the Keys then for others over to the Bahamas and the Abaco's in late winter and early spring. 






This is Kemba and Bob on Spirit Dancer they are possibly the first loopers we met heading south in October 2010 we first met them in Belhaven NC.  This picture was taken in NY at Half Moon Bay when we came back to the boat after visiting home in June 2011 they were docked directly behind us.



There is Spirit Dancer at Joe Wheeler in Alabama they have now completed their loop and are heading home (Texas) for 6 months then back out to the Bahamas for a couple of years.



Here is Carol and Monty (the largest looping dog) we met them in Norfolk Va in June and again on Mackinaw Island MI in August.




Theres Bill and Monty stretching their legs in Grand Harbor TN



There they go, heading home on there boat Trident, you can see Monty up at the helm with Bill, they have also completed the loop hence the gold flag at the bow.  Home for them is Houston Texas they hope to sell their boat as Carol has her eye on something a bit larger, when that happens they too will head to the Bahamas and beyond.






This is GodSpeed and SugarBaby, thats Billy peeking around the corner, they are from Louisiana. They are also heading back home to do some upgrades on the boat and will head back out again to the east coast in the spring. 

Pam and Billy on GodSpeed from Sidell LA

 

Fair Winds and Following Seas