Day 36

Well today is the day. We finally get to leave. The river is still running pretty quick, but the forecast calls for rain again on Monday night and into next week so it is now or never. We woke up early today at 5:30 just so that we could try and make it into Demopolis but after a call into the next lock, it sounds like the lock is full of debris. So we are going to wait until about 12noon to leave. At 10:00 we make another call to the lockmaster and find out that he has locked down a few other pleasure craft this morning, so we decide to leave. He says that the chamber is clear, however there is about 125 feet of debris in front of the lock that we have to plow through. This could be interesting. It ended up being mostly hycianith and grass from the swampland that accompanies the river, but there were a few logs and stumps scattered throughout it. We pushed our way thru, taking half of it with us into the lock and tired up against the wall.

The rest of the day was spent dodging large patches of grass and weed, logs and stumps. Sometimes there were patches so large that it looked like a putting green floating down the river! Because of our late start, we had to anchor out and decided to look for an anchorage suggested in one of the guidebooks. It was near an access ramp built by the army corps of engineers and promised to be a quiet secluded spot. We did end up finding it, but two other boats were already occupying it. One was named Yum Yum, a catamaran and the other Trust Me, a large 49 foot DeFever boat. Because there were two bay areas, each occupied by one of the boats, Grant decided to pull in close to the shore by the catamaran. However, after dropping anchor, this lovely boat owner decides to bellar out to us that we were in his “swing”. So we decide to pull into the other bay area, in front of the other boat. Grant was a little nervous about how close to shore we were, but there was absolutely no wind at this point and Grant put out all three anchors just to be sure…

Today is our 2-month anniversary, so Tabbie made a dinner of steak and rice and we hunkered down early to get an early start in the morning. Grant would like to beat these other boats out of here because it looks like there is only limited transient docking at the Demopolis marina and that is our last marina until Mobile. We don’t want to have to turn around and go back to a marina or anchorage spot!