Day 9 – 10
On Wednesday morning, 09/16/20, we left Aqua Yacht Harbor for Florence, AL. We’d hoped to get out in front of Tropical Storm Sally, but wound up encountering some outer rain bands from her anyway. Nothing bad, just not the beautiful conditions we’ve grown used to traveling in. We both prefer to helm the boat from up in the flybridge, but the intermittent rains had us running up and down between the flybridge and the salon helm for most of the trip. The wind whipped up the waters a bit, so that up and down trip got a little exciting at times. At one point, as I was sliding open the salon door, I got a good spray of river water right in the face! I had even pulled out our rain-suits to dawn when we got to Florence, in case we found ourselves docking in the rain. NOT my idea of enjoyable boating, but it does happen. We lucked-out and the rain stopped by 3 pm, when we reached the marina in Florence. Per the harbor master’s instruction, we tied up on the transient wall in the exact same place we’d tied on our last visit to Florence, with Mike and Brenda Wehrle.
The best thing about our new location in Florence was NO MORE ROCKING! So nice to have a stable living environment again for awhile. We used the Florence marina courtesy van to drive for dinner at our downtown Florence favorite, Ricatoni’s, then took the van again on 09/17/20, for a provisioning run to Walmart, Publix, and a haircut for Steve at Great Clips. This van was a bit cleaner than the ones at Green Turtle Bay, but had a nasty habit of just dying as we were driving it, even right in the middle of the road! Fortunately, it would restart, but Steve always had to completely stop and put it into park to restart, which I’m sure annoyed the drivers behind us. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the marina restaurant, Stanfield’s River Bottom Grille, which was back open again after having been closed during our last visit, due to an employee testing positive for Covid.
On Thursday morning, 09/18/20, we followed the harbor master’s recommendation and enjoyed a tasty breakfast at BBB (Big Bad Breakfast) back in downtown Florence, where slowly but surely the area seems to be coming back to life after the Covid hit, which was heartening to see!
We then returned to the marina to ready Legacy to head out for Joe Wheeler State Park Marina, which would require traversing not one, but two locks. Fortunately the weather was again cool and sunny for this trip. Gilligan is beginning to feel more and more at ease with her locking duties, thankfully. After another beautifully peaceful trip, we arrived at the transient docks at Joe Wheeler State Park about 3 pm that afternoon.
Day 9 – 10
Florence Harbor
Position tonight: N 34° 47.165, W 87° 40.417
Distance traveled: 38 NM
Total distance traveled: 203.6 NM
Time underway: 4 HRS 42 MIN
Total time underway: 23 HRS 50 MIN
Total marina nights: 7
Total nights at anchor: 3
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 1