Day 66 – 67
Early on Monday morning, 11/16/20, it was a nippy 34 degrees in our anchorage, and Steve warned me to tread carefully on the deck, in case some frost had formed on it. NOT what we signed up for! Given those temps, I also took extra care not to soak myself again that morning while pulling anchor.
The sun was out big time, which warmed up the flybridge quickly. I shed some layers and Steve changed out of his jeans into shorts and t-shirt. As we continued our winding route south toward Demopolis, AL, we passed the well-known White Cliffs of Epes near mile marker 248, formed completely from limestone deposits. They were really pretty and an abrupt, but welcome change of scenery.
Further along in the day, Steve was watching his AIS receiver and spied a tow and barge coming in our direction, downriver from us. He also noticed that the river between us and the oncoming barge was extremely winding, with several hairpin curves. We’d learned enough to know that a hairpin curve is not the best place to meet a barge, as the barge has to swing wide around corners, which tends to eat up the entire channel, leaving no room for a small pleasure craft, trying to share space on the river., Since the barge was still several miles ahead of us, Steve slowed Legacy’s speed in hopes that the barge would clear the hairpins before we met it. This greatly reduced our progress, but that was fine, considering the alternative. About 30 minutes into our slower speed, we heard from the towboat captain of that barge on Channel 16. He was watching us on his AIS, too, and realized we had slowed our speed because of him. With AIS, the oncoming vessel is also able to see our boat’s name and specifics we are transmitting out, long before we are physically visible on the water. He hailed us to let us know his rig was a smaller barge, so there was no need for us to slow down, as the river was plenty wide enough for both of our vessels to pass each other, hairpin curves or not. So we sped back up and met the barge a few turns later. We’d heard that towboat captains (and lock masters) could sometimes be a bit impatient with – or not readily speak to – pleasure crafts, but our experience along the entire Tennessee River and the TennTombigbee has been quite the opposite. The lock masters and tug captains have been very patient and helpful, and our interaction with them could not have been more pleasant.
Before we reached Demopolis, we passed the point where the Black Warrior River meets the Tombigbee River, which officially changes the river’s name from the TennTombigbee Waterway to the Black Warrior Tombigbee Waterway all the rest of the way to where it meets the Mobile River and then Mobile Bay, though we’ve noticed that it’s common for Loopers to refer to both stretches as the “TennTom”. We arrived at Demopolis Basin, where we fueled-up. The waters were quite shallow approaching the fuel docks, since this marina is silting up, too. They directed us next door to the Kingfisher Marina for pump-out and transient slip rental, where Steve had already made us reservations.
When we pulled into our slip at Kingfisher, we discovered three familiar boats were already there. Pearl, who we’d met back at Goose Pond Colony Resort on the Tennessee River, Cavu, which was the boat we shared an anchorage with up at the TennTom Oxbow, and Lucky Lucky, who we’d met way back at Green Turtle Bay Marina this past summer. We’ve heard and read that boaters will meet up with each other again and again doing the loop, and this was our second experience with that. Monday evening, 11/16/20, the Conways invited us to join them up in their flybridge for docktails, which we thoroughly enjoyed. The four of us told embarrassing boating stories on ourselves and laughed and laughed. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time – it felt wonderful!
On Tuesday, 11/17/20, we cleaned the boat and then used the Kingfisher courtesy van to drive into Demopolis for provisioning and errands. We ate lunch in town and that afternoon, back at the marina office, Steve attended his first Captain’s Meeting at 4:00 pm in the marina office. This is a meeting of the various transient captains that are planning to leave the following morning. Boats try to coordinate and leave at the same time, so they can all go through the upcoming locks at the same time, which speeds up everyone’s trip. Apparently, Captain’s Meetings are common all along the loop and Steve agreed that they are helpful. I didn’t attend this meeting, and wasn’t overly-thrilled with the fact that Steve attending it moved up our planned leave-out time by an hour from 7 am to 6 am, so we could run with the group. Ugh!
Position: N 32° 31.863, W 87° 50.485
Distance traveled: 42.7 NM
Total distance traveled: 1203.5 NM
Total marina nights: 54
Total nights at anchor: 13
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 25