THE RIVER SECTION November 17, 2008

Look Carefully and you will see a boat in the fog!

We are up at 6 am and tom calls the Stennis Lock Mile 335 and learns that everything is on hold because of Fog! Finally just before 7 am three of the loopers from our Marina start out. We follow along and a fifth boat joins us. We lock through and the other four boats take off with us as caboose. We are traveling between 7 and 8 miles per hour.
Tom yelled, "Get your camera. There is a deer in the River! "


At 9:30 am we enter our last state before Florida - ALABAMA. We are 314 miles from Mobile. This is a sparsely populated area with little or no internet accesses. So that is why we are a week behind in posting.
At 10 a.m. we see a Tristar sailing down the river in front of us! What a surpise. We chat with the Skipper Jim and discover he is headed for the Altantic Coast of Florida also through the inland canal and plans to stop in Crystal River to see the Manatees. We give him our number and name.
Along the river we pass through fields of floating lily type water plants. We saw a large clump in the lock yesterday. Today they litter the river. Some were in 18 feet of water so we know they can exist without having roots in sand or soil.


This is a very nice trailer park with a rock lined shore.

Adjacent to the Bevill Lock (named for a Lock Master) was the US Snagboat Montgomery, the last steam-powered sternwheeler in the southern inland waterways. She was used for six decades until retired in 1982 and put on display at the Tom Bevill Visitors Center.

Before entering the Bevill Lock, six boats had an hour wait. We followed a barge down to the lock and were unable to pass it. We get second preference to barges on locks. Following are pictures of some of the boats we shared the lock with.

All day we have been in the RIVER SECTION of the Tombigbee Waterway which runs from Mile 366 to 217 at the junction of the Black Warrior River. To creat this section a channel 9 feet deep and 300 feet wide was dredged. More that 30 cutoffs were constructed to eliminate many severe bends. Not all bends were eliminated and during the greater part of the day we navigated around river curves, some as sharp as 90 degrees and other a 325 degree turn! Stay tuned tomorrow for a look at some of these curves!

We keep the throttle forward and make it to Sumpter Recreation Area Mile 270 about 5 p.m or dark. We have traveled for 10 hours and covered 65 miles including two locks, one deer and lots of barges. Sumpter Recreation Area is in a small lagoon. We drop anchor in the middle and hope it will not get too cold tonight! Maybe tomorrow morning we can get an picture of this area.