We have now
left Joe Wheeler state park and are on a 10-14 day journey to Mobile bay. We
had a wonderful time with Liz and Stuart and learned even more at the
Rendezvous. It was a bit depressing as Tom Conrad announced his retirement from
the Weather Musings postings. Tom used to spend his winters analyzing the
weather from a whole bunch of sources and then advising loopers when to cross
the gulf of Mexico. Jim and I have been reading his musings for quite some time
and now he is retiring and enjoying his wit and guidance. He has trained a
replacement who promises to be equally amazing but it still is quite sad.
So we
shoved off around 8:20am. I felt like I was deserting Liz and Stuart as they
stood there with their suitcases waving goodbye. They did come see us in the second lock
though, so we got to say goodbye a second time. We were 19 boats shoving off
together and all organized to access the lock in an orderly fashion. The first,
Pickwick lock went very well. By the time we got to the second lock which is
Wilson lock, the wind picked up to 25 mph and it was incredibly difficult to
get in there and tie off. Jim and I made it without too much trouble, just a
little ding on the stern, port side. There were three boats that had a really
hard time. "Navigator" ended up banging his bow and w all heard the
crunch when he hit. "Blue Willow" ended up turning completely around
in the lock, so he just exited and tried again. "Bam A dream" nearly
hit his stern against the lock wall on 2 separate occasions and he ended up
leaving the lock twice to try again. He was so embarrassed he said on the radio
that he would just sit it out until the next lock. But he did make it in finally.
After all
was said and done, we exited without any more drama and then we ended up all
going our separate ways. Eight boats stopped in Florence Marina. A few more
took anchorages a little sooner and we stopped at the rock pile. The opening to
this little channel; which is Ross branch; has 3 large rock piles. We had to
enter in between the 2nd and third pile of rocks. It is really nice
here and very peaceful. The rest of the
boats continued on. Some will stop in Grand Harbor and the others will be
anchoring along the Tennessee River. Tomorrow Jim and I will be exiting the
Tennessee River and going onto the Ten-Tom. I'll tell you all about that tomorrow.
PS. The Ten-Tom is very remote and we may not be able to post every day.
I will write my blog and post whenever I am able to.
No comments:
Post a Comment