On the Water with As You Wish: Nov 1 Aqua Harbor Marina to Bay Springs Anchorage

Nov 1

First, everything is fine with Martha’s tooth. She got in to see a local dentist, x-rays taken, consultation with our home dentist, and all agree unless it starts giving her pain she can just wait until we’re home at Thanksgiving in a few more weeks and have our dentist work on it. So major crisis avoided. As expected the weather did turn nasty with 2 days of clouds, rain, wind, etc.so we stayed put at the marina, reprovisioned, went to the Shiloh National Military Park and watched a great film detailing the civil war battle, had docktails with 21 other loopers one evening celebrating Ben’s birthday on “At Ease” and then had a great chili dinner another night with several other looper couples at the local harbor hosts – Charlie and Robin from “The Lower Place” - who we met while they were doing their 2^nd loop. Not a bad way to spend a few weather days.

Docktails aboard "At Ease" celebrating Ben's B'day

I don’t know what the deal is with trying to start our travel days early at Aqua Harbor Marina but when we tried leaving for our trip up the Tennessee we got fogged in and delayed by several hours. It happened again this morning as we were trying to leave for the trip down the Tenn-Tom. Even more interesting this morning, on top of the fog was the freezing temperatures we got overnight leaving frost all over the boat. I had to put on jeans and a sweatshirt!! I know it’s now Nov. - but still – it just doesn’t seem right to have all these clothes on when you’re traveling through Alabama and Mississippi. We’re in the deep south – we want warmth and humidity.

Frost on the ropes, rails, deck and kayak - yuck!!

FOG !!!

Our original plan was to make a long day of it and head all the way to Midway Marina. That requires going through 3 locks and a 60+ mile run. The first lock – Whitten Lock – implemented a new policy effective TODAY (just our luck) where they will only lock pleasure craft through at 8AM, noon, and 4PM (or anytime on demand during the night). It’s a little over 30 miles from Aqua to Whitten so we were hoping to leave at 7 and arrive at the lock for the noon opening. With our fog delayed late departure we knew we wouldn’t make it so went to Plan B which was to drop the hook for the night in a nice anchorage right before the lock. It lets us make the 8AM lockage and then another easy day down to Midway. And even if we get fogged in again, we’ll hit the noon lockage and still be in Midway before dark. The Tenn-Tom between Pickwick Lake and Bay Springs Lake is 25 miles of man-made canal. I was hoping to follow someone with AIS (an electronic system that notifies you of oncoming boats) but it didn’t work out and we wound up going through this section solo. Surprisingly we met 4 different tows heading upbound. The first one was a surprise as we both came around a corner. Went to idle and he gave an actual “one whistle” horn blast to direct us to pass port to port. All the other tows came while we were in straighter sections of the canal, so we had plenty of time to maneuver around them without issue. We were just surprised by the number of tows. For a short day it was more than we’ve seen in a while.

Tow #1 pushing empty barges around a tight corner

Tow #2 pushing barges of chemicals

Tow #3 loaded with mulch!!

Tow #4 with covers over his shipment

Dropped the hook at 2. Pretty anchorage with plenty of fall colors surrounding us. Very light NW breeze with plenty of sunshine making the enclosed flybridge the place to spend the afternoon. Great sunset but then freezing temperatures again tonight so some chili and sandwiches for dinner and then snuggle under our flannel sheets for the night.