This boating /traveling is a really different lifestyle compared to being time driven. Everything moves a lot slower and there have been times when that drives me nuts. But, I am starting to understand and go with the flow. Everyone is very friendly and helpful. I have now slept on the boat every night since October 4th. I had planned to stay in a motel/hotel every once in a while, but almost all marinas have showers and laundries. Most have a lounge with tv,magazines, books. There is a book library at every marina where you bring in one you have read and pick out one you want to read, just trade books. The cost to stay in marinas varies, and it is almost always by the length of the boat. I have paid from $7.50 to $20.00 a night once I got off the Illinois River.
Everything on the boat is working fine. The 2 hp Hondas run good and do exactly what they are designed to do. They will move the boat between 5-6 mph at half throttle with one motor, unless against a current, then my speed will drop.
I arrived at Grand Harbor Marina on October 27th. This is a nice marina with condos all around it.
On, Sunday November 1, 2009, I left Grand Harbor Marina at 6:30 am with very little fog. About 1/2 mile down the Yellow Creek River, you make a left turn into the Tennessee/Tombigbee waterway that goes 450 miles to the Gulf. When I made that turn the fog was so thick I could just see the front of my boat. So this is not good. I turned around and went back to the marina. Had a couple more cups of coffee and a half hour later, the fog was gone.
Back underway, and now with the current, which is nice. This waterway has 12 locks, the 1st 10 locks are close together, between 5 and 15 miles apart. The very first one has a drop of 84 ft that makes my boat look really small. These pictures are actually just from a drop of 30-40’ locks. Didn’t get pictures of the 84’ drop lock.
All 12 of these locks have what is called floating bollards. You loop your line around when going up and down, and yes, I have missed getting my line around it. After a couple of misses, I remembered how the cowboys did it.
The next 7 days we went through 10 locks and traveled 234 miles. We stayed at 1 marina and anchored out 6 nights. There were a couple of things that happened during the 7 days.
1) In one of the locks, there were two 35’ to 40’ boats along with Tug and myself. We’d been in the lock for about 20 minutes when the lockmaster asked us all to go back out of the lock, as a barge was coming. After the barge was in the lock, the lockmaster called us all back in to the lock to lock down with the barge. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get everyone in the lock correctly. That was different being beside a barge in my 15"’ boat. No problems and everything went fine.
2) As I was coming up on the white cliffs of EPES, I had gotten my camera out and was focused on taking pictures of these limestone/granite cliffs that go right down into the water.
There is a 90 degree turn halfway through the cliffs. As I got to the turn, there is a tug with barges coming upstream. I called the Tug on the VHF radio and the captain said you will be fine, just be aware that my stern will swing towards you. O.K. I am fine. Well, his stern did exactly what he said and I and the boat handled the wake just fine. When his wake hot the limestone cliffs and came back at me from behind, it caught me off guard and almost turned me completely around. For a few seconds, I thought I was going to bounce off the Limestone wall. Everything was fine but I don’t want to do that again.
3) On Friday November 6, while running in the main channel, I broke a shear pin on the starboard(right side) outboard. This is one of the advantages of two motors. I raised the broken motor out of the water and lowered the other motor and everything was fine. I replaced the shear pin while at anchor that night.
We got into Demopolis Marina Sunday morning at 11:00. They gave us a covered slip with the weather forecast for rain from IDA starting Monday. Late Monday afternoon it started to rain. It rained all night and all day Tuesday.
The river rose and boats were coming in the marina. About 2 boats a day were being lifted out of the water,with busted props and bent drive shafts. It was something to see the boats being lifted out.
Nice to see you’re doing well on your trip.
I’ve been following your adventure, and you seem to be having a ball! I’m envious, but plan to start my own trip ASAP…perhaps this coming fall.
What are the red pipes for, on the cabin top? I can see from the photos that they house the lights, but I don’t understand the design of the structure. I’m sure it serves a good purpose…just don’t know what it may be.