Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Joe and I got up at 5; soon we started seeing lights and activity in the other boats around us as we all prepared to leave the marina. 

It's weird not to have Phil around--he was with us for 4 weeks and I keep looking for him.

One of the other boaters was in contact with the lockmaster so we could time our arrival at the lock without having to wait to get in.

Finally, we got the word that the lock would be ready for us at 6:30, so at 6:15 we all pulled out of the marina.

There are 8 boats leaving together this morning, all of them Loopers; 7 are motor vessels and one is a sailing vessel.  There is “Carolyn Ann” (a Great Harbor), “Glory Days” (a 40’ Mainship), “cbay” (a Bayliner), “Kismet”, “Once Around”, “Sea Biscuit”, and Me’Nou (the sailboat).

On the way we passed a paper plant where these logs were being sprayed with water.  We've seen several of these operations along the Tenn-Tom waterway.

 

We all reached the lock in an orderly fashion and were out in about 20 minutes.

It was 59ºF when we got up this morning, and by 10:30 it was 72ºF; we sure love warmer weather!

Someone apparently had a lot of fun building this "sailboat"; it would have taken quite a bit of time to do, I should think.

We are now on what is called the Black Warrior/Tombigbee waterway; here is a screen shot from our navigation software showing one of the wiggly portions of the river that we had to go through today, the rest wasn’t quite as bad.

On one of the straighter portions of the river, the Skipper relaxes while the First Mate takes the helm.

This Army Corps of Engineers boat is measuring the water depths.  He traveled along pretty fast--about 10 knots.

This classic beauty shared our anchorage with us just off the channel.

We toasted another good day of cruising as the sun set.