EAST SHORE MARINA November 22-23, 2008

It is a weekend of work: getting blog up to date, cleaning Catrina in and out, taking all the tie down lines off the mast and boom, refilling the propane, washing clothes, shopping, finding the sails and lines and getting the mast up on Monday Morning early!

MOBILE EAST SHORE November 21, 2008

Catrina has lot of miles to cover today because it is 64 miles to Mobile and our marina is 15 miles further toward the Gulf. We beat the sun up and were on the river before 6:30! We must be getting used to the cold as the inside was 45 degrees and who know how cold it was outside. However, there was no ice!

Debbie even remembered to take a picture of Three Rivers Lake Mooring in the predawn light!

With the tide going out (downriver) and the wind from the North (usually behind us) we make 8.4 mph and pass the junction of the Alabama River in 2 ¼ hours (8:45 a.m.)

Please notice the colors on the sign post. Green for the AL flowing into the Black Warrier/Tombigbee and Red for the upper river (away from port) of the main river. At this point the River is also called the Mobile River. That seems appropriate!

At this point the Mobile River is a lot wider. We spend a lot of time going with the current from side to side on each curve. Not often are we headed south with the sun on our left but I guess the river knows where it is going. Let’s hope!

When the Tensas River junctions at mile 39.3, the Mobile River gets narrower. It did not look like water was leaving to go to the Tensas. We will have to check this out. There wasn’t a marker post at the junction.

At mile 30 we come around a bend and are passed by a steel hulled two masted sailboat. He looks like he is going rapidly but the truth is we are the one moving quickly and he is motoring upriver!

We pass a swinging railroad bridge. This time we did not have to ask. They saw us coming and open the bridge!

Tom make good use of the sunlight to go over the lines that run up the mast. He changes the hook-in line for the TV set. The windvane and radar are good.

At 11:30 a.m, mile 20,we passed under the I-65 bridge. In three miles the shore changed to bayou country with grass, small palms and mangrove trees. From here on there are a number of small waterways back into the bayou.

When we reach the Big Bayou Canot Junction at Mile 9.8, we asked a passing pusher to make sure we took the correct route of three. He said two would work but of those one was pretty shoaled in. We took the one the barges use and passed a number of them. One of the barges was Kirby’s Antigone. We have passed it each day for the last two and this makes the third time. So I took a picture of it.





We reached Mobile at 2 p.m. It is a working town and the river is cluttered with boats of all types. On the north shore is their Convention Center and behind it Government Street and a few high rises.




Toward the gulf are the cruise ships. We passed a very large Norwegian Lines Ship.





Catrina cruised on by and 3 miles into the Gulf. It is windy here, very brisk with white caps. Next we turned east and headed for the Eastern Shore on a rolling broad reach and our home for the next three days. You guessed it - East Shore Marina!

THREE RIVERS LAKE November 20, 2008

With no heat at our water hideaway (Bashi Creek), Debbie nearly froze. We went to bed early with extra covers and tried not to get up during the night. When the alarm went off at 6:30, it was 48 degrees in the cabin. It was very hard to take off our hats, mittens and everything else to get into day clothes. You guessed it. We dressed in record time and were on the river by 6:45 a.m. The sun was just coming up over the trees and the fog was disappearing. It would be a sunny day!

We are determined to get to Three Rivers Lake because then we can be in Mobile by Friday night. However, that is 81 miles and one lock away. When we had been on the river about an hour, some of the boats from Bashi come up behind us.

We cannot understand why they are not passing us until they turn off at Bobby’s Fish Camp (Mile 118.90 ). We hear the Bashi boats talking on the radio and discover all six boats are stopping at Bobby’s for the night. Bobby’s has a 100 foot dock which is filled on a first come, first served basis. There is no electric service but they do charge by the foot. There is a restaurant which is open for dinners Thursday through Saturday and if our digital clock which tells us correctly, this is Thursday!
Two miles down at Mile 116.6 is our last lock and dam, Coffeeville. Tom calls and we are told to that as soon as he fills the lock we can drive right in. Ten minutes later Debbie lassos a bollard and soon we have gone through our last lock of this trip

Coffeeville Dam is letting water out.

At mile 103 we pass Peavy’s Landing or as the locals know it “Redneck Rivera”.

We move into mileage double digit numbers about noon. They are so much easier to read on the shore signs and it means we will be Mobile for the weekend. Tom is able to get on his cell phone and makes a reservation at Eastern Shore Marina just east of Mobile for three nights with mast raising on Monday. We hope it is much warmer there. Days are in the 70’s but when the sun goes down, it is a bit nippy for us Floridians!

We pass a few barges today about one every 20 miles but they are the only boats on the river. We have lost those terrible hairpin corkscrew curves of yesterday and it is a long but relatively easy day. Below is an interesting home predicament!

At of the Coffeeville Dam we entered the tidal waters and are at sea level. We have tides! Bridge heights are referenced to the mean high water (MHW) while anchorage depths are to mean low water (MLW). We have to be careful when we select a overnight mooring that we will not become aground at low tide! We are seeing frequent water level measuring post.

Late afternoon a coast guard boat passes us.

We know we are getting closer to civilization because we now have a few bridges over the river. It is 85 in the cockpit this afternoon and when passing under a bridge, Debbie get dripped on through the skylight.

Unfortunately, we spoke to soon about the pleasant relaxed curves. We end the day with a curlique route. We are happy our route is not measured by “as the crow flies.”

After the sun sets we get to our mooring at Three Rivers Lake at 5 pm. We don’t see a lake or any rivers other than the Black Warrior we turned off. We did 81 miles (definitely the longest day to date) in 10 ¾ hours!!!

BLACK WARRIOR November 19, 2008

This morning, boat and yacht club walkways had a layer of ice. As Debbie was putting on her last piece of clothing, Tom yelled, "Get up here. We have to leave now." It was only 7:30 and we had planned to have a lazy start. Debbie ran across the Marina to the Yacht Office, found no one there and left the bathroom key with no $5 refund. Then she located Fred who helped us get out. By 8 a.m. we had freed the underwater cable from Catrina and were following a group of boats to the next lock three miles down the river.

Catrina was the last boat to enter the Demopolis Lock. We were instructed to tie off another larger boat on the right side. That's how we met Bill on Tortuga. One of the ten bollards was broken and we were the tenth boat!

Demopolis Lock is the next to last lock of our trip, is our 27 lock to date and has a 40 foot drop. As the level lowered in the closed lock, water began flowing through holes in the upriver door. It looked and sounded like a waterfall!

It was pretty to watch the first 8 boats leave the lock and move into the Black Warrior River. At Mile 217 a few miles above Demopolis, the Black Warrior joined the Tombigbee and the name changed to BWTB. The lower portion of the Waterway to Mobile covers 213 miles. Wide, deep and meandering, this stretch is essentially a natural river and required minimal dredging. The Waterway Guide also states that this run requires self-sufficiency on the part of the boater. There are no marinas along this stretch and only one fuel stop! What the book did not state was that no one took out the curves!

A second deer swam across in front of Catrina as we left the Lock at 9 am. Look carefully!

At Mile 201 we passed the remains of the Old Rooster Bridge. This was the bridge where the tugboat Cahaba capsized and pushed under during a flood in April 1979. The towboat popped up on the other side of the bridge and continued on under its own power (a Video is available on internet).


Captain Tom has been piloting as Debbie records. He said there are frequent curves and the guide book backs him up by saying we will encounter 180 degree switchbacks with too much regularity!

It might be easier to see from above. This is the Rentz Ferry Ox Bow where they did not cut the ox bow but should have!
The continued use of the actual river bed rather than a cut across got us almost dizzy figuring if we were going north, south, east or west. Going around a curve on the left curve on the above GPS picture, Debbie hit the autopilot 10 degree button 12 times or 120 degrees.



A couple other interesting sights: Below is a tree on the shore that looks like a nursery removed it from the ground and it is ready for sale!

Along the banks we see scattered docks. Sometimes we can look into the woods and see a fish camp. We have been warned that the Alabama fishermen feel they control the river and we should be careful when passing them not to make a wake. So far we have not seen a fisherman, just a camp!




We are trying to remember if this was our longest mile day. It definitely was since Kentucky Lake. We covered 71 miles from 7 am to 5 pm (10 hours). When we arrived at Bashi Creek six boats from Demopolis Lock were in residence. They had formed two rafts - three boats tied together. We dropped front and stern anchors just inside the North (I think) entrance of the inlet. When asked where we had been, we suggested that we were the caboose!





Today we were joined by a sailboat skippered by a mother (and 6 year old daughter). They planned to travel only 30 miles today and were joined by Tortuga probably as security.




And lastly Golf Cart (a boat name) dropped anchor right on the river under a bridge at the side of the river. The bridge abutment protected them from passing tows.

DEMOPOLIS November 18, 2008

Last evening our locking friends stopped about two miles up river from us. We had Sumpter Recreation Area (above) Mile 269.9 to ourselves. We set the alarm for 6 but found that getting up was not so easy. We did not have ice on the outside of Catrina like yesterday morning but we also did not have electric to run our furnace last night. We had warmed the bedroom up with our ceramic heater before hopping into bed but by morning it was so chilly! Debbie had to shake Tom to make him get up. The sun as we left our secret hideway was just visible.

Nights are usually in the low 30's and days windy and (hopefully) not rainy with temps in the high 50's or low 60's. It is the wind and humidity that makes it so cold. Some people ask how we keep warm. Debbie layers clothing with warm socks, shoes, underwear and sometimes a tank top, tops and bottoms of long underwear, slacks, polar fur pullover or sweatshirt, wind and water proof pants, zippered polar fur, jacket with lining and hood and cap and mittens. Tom wears slacks, long sleeved shirt, jacket and hat. Our testerone levels are different! Debbie also gets up at least 5 minutes earlier than Tom just to get all the layers in place!

We continue to see green lily-like vegetation along the shores and floating in the river

I mentioned earlier that the air/heat furnace works off electricity. We can run the generator and use the furnace but so far we have used our little hearter sporadically and only in the bedroom to keep the boat warm. At night Debbie wears a long nightgown, jacket, slacks and socks. She has a hat and mittens if needed. Tom sleeps nude but sometimes wears a hat or hides under the covers so all you see is a lump! We have heard that opposites attract!

As we pull out of Sumpter, a barge psses us. With only three miles to go we did not even try to pass him. We knew the pusher would have already called in and gets preference at Heflin Lock. We drop anchor up river of the lock and wait. Soon three boats from yesterday and a new one join us. They are all headed for Demopolis yacht Basin.

Low sand cliffs and walls of light, crumbly rock appear along the river but most of the time it is scrub and trees. The leaves are brown or gone. Rarely is there any sign of human beings. We knew cell or internet reception was spacy and so is the population!

We were on the river by 6:30 and after many hours we departed the Heflin Lock at 9 a.m. This was much slower than we anticipated. If we thought it would take 2 1/2 hours to go three miles, some of us would have stayed in bed! The trawlers took off and we wandered along the curves at 8 mph.

The Cliffs of Epes were a wonder surprise, Mile 248.8. We will have to locate a native and ask what the type of rock is in these Cliffs.

The last 32 miles we passed a couple barges and enjoyed the countryside.

Demopolis Yacht Basin is an older marina with many different types and vintage of boats. One older building contained the shower and wireless, another a marine store, mast raising facilities ($400 plus labor) and a fuel station. We were the last of five boats to arrive so we got the bitter end spot on the end of a far out dock. A neighboring boater grabbed our line and asked if we knew about the underwater cables. No one told us and we hooked one with a rudder or motor. Fortunately, Tom was going very slowly so we did not sever it. We talked to the head maintenance man Fred. He promised to help us get out tomorrow. He also lent us the maintenance truck to run to town. We ate at Farmhouse Restaurant - a buffet of overcooked food. Showers next. We only had one key so we shared. Tom watched TV after dinner while Debbie went to the wireless shower building to work on this blog. Our boat was too far away to pick up their wireless.

We closed up for the coldest night yet. We were happy to have electric so we could run the furnace!

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.