The mighty Wilson Lock

Forgot to post this photo Thursday when I climbed the mast.

On Friday morning, we got up early and were accompanied by our hosts, Steve and Toni, along with Chip's wife, Lizzie. Although they live 4 miles from the lock, they had never been through it. We had a 30 minute wait while a big group of bass boats locked up to start a tournament.


Toni and Steve prepare for Wilson Lock at sunrise

We got in and tied off, and the lock began its 93-foot drop down to Pickwick Lake. It is the largest lock on the Tennessee River and I was told it is the largest freshwater lock in North America. In any event it is a monstrous engineering feat.


We pulled into Florence Marina to drop off our guests and get a 11 gallons of fuel. I got our the calculator and figured that we are getting 14 miles per gallon. The current is helping our normal 12 mpg consumption.


Chip Thomas and Captain Ron

We left the marina and turned downstream toward the mouth of the Tenn-Tom Waterway, about 40 miles away. At 2:15 p.m., we turned into Yellow Creek, which is the mouth of the waterway. It is so narrow and inauspicious, you would never know that it is the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico. There are no signs or markings unless you are reading a chart. We celebrated with a "Dark and Stormy" cocktail, since the weather was not.

About six miles into the Waterway, we entered the manmade "Divide Cut" which is affectionately known as the "ditch." It is a 300 foot wide ditch with rip-rap rock on both sides. There are pretty trees and hills on either side, but it has a very mechanical, man-made feel to it (because it is). You also get a heightened sense of speed since you are so close to a wall on either side. We traveled through a 20 mile section of this and needed to get to the end of it to find an anchorage for the night. We knew we wouldn't have enough light to get to the Bay Springs Marina.

About 10 miles down the ditch, we came up on a huge towboat pushing nine barges full of coal at about 6 knots. Since we were going faster than that, and afraid to slow down and use up our daylight, I called the tow captain and asked for his permission to pass. He said yes (probably laughing his ass off) and we revved up the Yanmar diesel and inched our way around. It got my heart racing because we had such a small margin of water between us, the wall, and the towboat. But we did make it and when we anchored as the sun set, we were glad we had pressed on.


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