On the morning of November 21st, we got up at 5:00 a.m. reasonably refreshed from getting to bed early the night before. The storm system came through the night before, but in our covered slip, it didn’t really affect us much. It was raining, we had a lock to go through, and we had approx. 2.5 n/m via a narrow channel to even get to the lock, in pitch blackness, but first we needed coffee.
I had been given the nickname, “Bumpy” for my act of running aground. I took it with good humor and humility. Well two of the four boats in our little flotilla briefly ran aground on the way out of the marina channel. I will withhold names, but the nickname Bumpy is no more as two more joined that club. (“You will run aground; you will hit a log.”) Hygge followed our Garmin track on the way in the day before out the channel, but it was still nerve racking coming out into the main river. Once on the river we had the chart plotter, but it was pitch black, raining and just as we rounded a bend a northbound tow was heading up from out of the lock (we were southbound). We couldn’t just blindly follow the chart plotter as there were lots of barges tied up to the side of the river that chart plotter doesn’t show, so there was not the room on our left (the tow was on our right side) that the chart indicated. Plus, we had nine boats all around us.
You can imagine our relief when we passed by the tow and headed into the lock, which was nicely lit up. Once through the lock we were off the Tenn-Tom waterway and pushing hard for Mobile Bay. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” was our motto.
There were a few boats in their own flotilla who wanted to pass ours and go on up ahead. That was fine with us. You need to know that we had agreed to monitor Channel 68 on the VHF radio the night before to communicate between us. You also need to know that it is courtesy to notify the boats behind you if you see a big floating log that could hit the boat/prop (or a Bald Eagle or an alligator on the bank). The lead boat was coming on the Channel 68 every few minutes: “Floating vegetation on the port side. Floating vegetation on the starboard side.” And each communication was met with two replies of “boatname copy that.” Not only was this constant interruption annoying, but IMHO risked the “boy who cried wolf” issue of missing the one callout that really matters: “big log in the water.” I was getting annoyed as was Gavin. After about forty-five minutes of this Gavin game over the radio and announced, “Rear flotilla let’s switch to 71.” Now from our experience with Frau Blücher the day before, we actually had a code phrase, “Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi” to switch from 68 to 71, but Gavin opted not to use it. Point made! (In fairness to the OCD lead flotilla, if it works for them, fine; but it didn’t work for us.)
On the way down we passed The Old Naheola Bridge near Pennington, AL. “Until its closure to automobile traffic in 2001, the Naheola Bridge was one of only a few bridges in the world that accommodated rail, auto, and river traffic.” I got this picture of Sol Maria going under it:
.jpg)
Late in the day we passed a guy putting in his bass boat on his own private boat ramp:
Now a word about bass boats. They travel at two speeds: trolling and superfast. Here is a short video from the next day of a relatively slow pass by one, mostly they go as the wiz on by:
It is also a good time to pause and tell you about the time, circa 1980, that I towed in a bass boat with a dead engine to the dock with my Hobie 14 sailboat. I can only assume his friends are still giving him grief over it (mine would be).
Our original plan was to try and anchor at Bashi Creek, a narrow tributary. When we got to it, we realized that there was no way that Sol Maria with her twenty-four-foot beam was getting up that creek. I regret that I didn’t get a picture of that entrance, but it was narrow. ( We opted to push on another three hours to get to Okatuppa Creek. It meant arriving just as the sun was setting, but we didn’t have much choice. South of Bashi Creek we entered the Choctaw National Wildlife Refuge. Beautiful, but the light was a bit dim for pictures:
https://www.fws.gov/refuge/choctaw
The” Waterway Guide” app mentioned that boats should enter the Creek and move around the bend where the creek widens out. When we got to it, there were two boats anchored most definitely not around the bend but blocking the narrow channel forcing Sol Maria to drop anchor more or less at the mouth of the Creek just barely out of the main river. We were not pleased. To the credit of one of the boats, he did offer to move, but it was dark by then and Sol Maria had a “good hook.” KatMat and Hygge took our now-standard positions rafted up on either side of Sol Maria. You can’t imagine how nice it has been to be able to raft up to her at anchor. Takes away our stress and allows social intercourse between the three boats.
Fika came up later and anchored behind us with their rear end nudging the river.
We were so relieved after this twelve-hour day that we broke out our supply of the best bratwurst in the world, jalapeño cheddar, from Bernie’s Meats in Port Washington, WI. Gavin grilled them and the Fika crew came over and we pulled out some more from our supply. Nancy made a great coleslaw as well. It was a long day (81 n/m) that pushed our boundaries a bit, but we did feel a nice sense of accomplishment. And, bonus, we went to bed knowing that we had two leftover brats for lunch the next day, so we had that going for us, which was nice.
Dave
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment