Up a Lazy River

(Mon June 29th - Happy Birthday Pat!)
We turned off the generator in hopes of a cool night breeze, which never materialized so it was a rough night’s sleep for me. Once again we were early risers and managed to get going by 7am. Weighing anchors was really easy this morning, soft mud. Almost immediately we had to pull up and wait for a tow to pass on the Mobile River, and then around the bend we both had to wait for the Jackson RR Bridge to open. After passing through the swing bridge and passing one south bound tow we pulled in front of the one ahead of us and that was it for the day – no more barges, almost. The river was smooth as glass for the most part; and we made a nice cool breeze for ourselves as we traveled up the river at 7 knots. Once we passed the junctures of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers the scenery totally changed. Gone are the marsh lands and cicadas, now there seems to be ‘real’ river banks of soft sand or mud, trees and birds. I hear more chirping now than I’ve heard in weeks – it’s all very serene.

We passed by the Barry Steam Plant which looks to employ lots of people and there was some major construction going on around the Seaward and Greer Landings. We’d read an upcoming RR bridge is 8’ closed so we were prepared to call it when we noticed it’s like 19’. Duh - then it dawns on us that the river is extremely low and getting more and more so with each passing mile. The banks are becoming more pronounced and the lane in which we are allowed to traverse in is narrower. Our reality was when we attempted to enter “Old Lock #1” our home for the night and we bottomed out at about 50 feet in. Our guide had said ‘feel your way in should be 4-5 feet’. NOT. So the further up river we went, the closer we got to the lock, the more shallow the water became. Makes sense. Since we are on such a crazy switch-back portion of the river system we decided to log our miles real time instead of what’s on paper. Unfortunately that gave us a 12 hour day and traveled 80 miles; a record for us! (made up for the short day yesterday) Without wanting to travel any further we just turned around and backed into the Old Lock #1 and sat quietly in the mud for the night. We did drop anchors just in case, but never moved. There was one tow that passed us shortly after we’d turned off the engines and we asked him to let any other tows know that we were there, he indicated we were in a good spot and should have no trouble.