Day 63
Friday, the 13th, dawned with some fog, which soon gave way to sunshine and calm waters. We have been really fortunate – weatherwise – on this trip so far. We got around early and along with Miss Conduct and Safe Haven (a single-handed Mainship trawler), we traveled through three more TennTombigbee locks, Fulton, Wilkins, and Amory. We had considered also going through the Aberdeen lock today, but changed our minds because it was getting late in the day. Miss Conduct and Safe Haven continued on, but Legacy chose to tie up at the tiny Aberdeen Marina, outside Aberdeen, MS. We had heard this marina wasn’t much more than a package/convenience store with some gas pumps, and we’d heard correctly. It’s also known for it’s long, tricky entrance. Steve called and spoke with the Aberdeen marina owner, but could barely understand his thick, Middle Eastern accent. Our biggest concern was water depths entering and inside the marina, but the owner insisted his marina could accommodate our boat’s 5-foot draft. Steve followed the electronic charts to locate the marina’s entrance, but the charts weren’t correct. They showed the marina on the starboard side of the river, when it was actually located on the port side! Unfortunately, we did not discover that until after we’d followed some small, vaguely-placed channel markers that wound around into a cove to starboard. The further in we got, the more shallow the waters became, until we were churning up clouds of mud behind our stern. Steve inched Legacy along at idle speed as we scanned the banks for any sign of a marina. No matter how hard we looked, a marina did not appear. Meanwhile, Miss Conduct and Safe Haven remained out in the middle part of the water, as they were waiting for the Aberdeen lock to clear so they could go ahead and lock-through. We felt certain they were watching us and laughing. Using several other instruments, we realized the error of our ways, and set about turning Legacy around in the small, shallow space and getting her out of there! After what seemed like hours, we managed to get back out into the river without running aground. Steve got on the radio to Miss Conduct and Safe Haven and muttered, “It helps if you know which side of the river the marina is on…” D’OH! Now that we were on the correct side of the river, we started following the convoluted “maze” of winding channels marked with “creative” markers, cypress trees and very shallow depths. We stirred up even more mud and frazzled more nerves for another thirty minutes until we finally turned a corner to see the marina. The whole way in, our depth gauge reflected less than 1-foot of depth beneath our keel. There was a really small transient wall equipped with maybe two power poles. What appeared to be the marina owner’s residence/houseboat sat just down from where the owner instructed us to tie-up. This marina offered fuel, but no pump-out facilities, which told us right off we did NOT want to accidentally fall into that water, especially with the proximity of the owner’s houseboat. Yuck… I was a bit concerned about our degree of safety at this marina, given the age and quality of cars that patronized the adjacent package store. In fact, later that evening, a group of young men worked on the engine of one of the vehicles, racing it repeatedly and loudly into the night, which made me wonder just how long it would take to finish the repair. Fortunately the noise ended by 8 pm, so I’d worried for nothing.
Position: N 33° 50.380, W 88° 30.504
Distance traveled: 32.4 NM
Total distance traveled: 1078.8 NM
Total marina nights: 52
Total nights at anchor: 11
Locks today: 3
Locks Total: 21