Rhythym of the River

We departed the Demopolis Yacht Basin at 7:00 on Wednesday morning and arrived at the Demopolis Lock about 7:20. Once again, the gates were open and the green light was on. There were three pleasure boats in the lock, including us. We exited the lock before 8:00 and were on our way down the Tombigbee River.


We hounded this poor Egret for five miles!

Alabamians have been looking for ways to make use of the Tombigbee for over one hundred years. In the late 1800s, it was two feet deep below Demopolis and one foot deep above the town. At the turn of the century, they built a series of locks on the Black Warrior River and the Tombigbee to move goods between Brimingham and Mobile.

We were enjoying moving our goods downstream, too, even though it was the first overcast day we have had since the trip started. It was still about 70 degrees, so we were very comfortable. Right about lunchtime we came up on the stern of a down bound towboat, so the little Yanmar had to rev up again to pass a couple thousand tons of coal. The tow captain told us that the railroad bridge up ahead was stored in the up position unless a train was coming, so we didn't even have to call the bridge tender on the radio.


There is an interesting lingo that the tow captains use to communicate how they want to pass other boats on this narrow winding river. Since the days of steamboats, they settled on a code of one whistle = leave me on your port side or two whistles = leave me on your starboard side. But since they now use radios, they say "One whistle, Cap'n" or more often they say, "I'll see you on the one" or "I'll see you on the two." It reminded me of truckers talking on their CB radios in the 70s. But, whatever, we were on their turf and we fell into using their lingo. They were all very cordial and very concerned for everyone's safety -- which makes them different from today's truckers.

As we clicked off the miles, we were trying to determine where we would spend the night. There are very few anchorages along this river. In fact one of the suggested ways to get "off" the river and sleep is to tie up to a bridge piling on the Highway 10 bridge! We passed under this bridge at about 2:00 p.m. and laughed at the prospect of tying off to it. The next possibility was Bashi Creek. We motored past it at 5:00 p.m. and decided it looked too swampy and narrow. But, of course, we were running out of daylight and the next potential anchoring spots were 20 miles away. We decided to risk running out of daylight, since it was a full moon and our chart plotter was working perfectly (meaning we could drive by instuments). Another factor in our favor was that there were no more towboats on the river in our path.


Barry steers us downriver

We made it Okatuppa Creek (MM123.2) at about 7:20 p.m. after spending 30 minutes cruising in the very dark twilight using a search light to lookout for trouble. The Creek was just barely deep enough for us to pull in out of the channel. I dropped anchor and we fired up the grill to sear a pork tenderloin. We had covered 93 miles that day and the celebratory martini was particularly smooth.


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