Day 2-328 heading down (South) the Tombigbee Waterway

   We bid farewell to Grand Harbor at 8:00 am as we headed down the Tombigbee Waterway. Some of the Loopers were heading back a half mile to head further up the Tennessee River. The Tennessee River evidently has some beautiful cruising areas and The AGLCA (America's Great Loop Cruising Association) is holding their Annual Fall Rendevoux at Joe Wheeler State Park in Alabama in a couple of weeks. The big building is a condo, and all but 3 are in a rental pool. The amenities are nice, but there is no food service of any kind (?). There are other town houses and condos on the water and in the woods.

     As we headed down the Tombigbee, the first couple of miles were in what seemed like a flooded river valley of a small creek that had flowed into the Tennessee River before the Pickwick Landing dam and lock had been constructed just downstream. Shortly after that we were obviously in an artificial cut that had been made to connect the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River. The waterway was often perfectly straight for miles with stone armored shorelines.  The picture at the left is from the stern looking back at the ditch (artificial cut). The current, if any, would be favorable (i.e. in the direction that we were heading).

     Our destination for today was Midway Marina in Fulton, MS, which is a distance of 56.3 miles with 3 locks. The travel time would be about 7 hours plus an unknown amount of time for the 3 locks. By the time that we reached the first lock after 18.2 miles we were in the company of "Cool Cat" and "Friendly Cove". The picture at the right shows Lucky Us in the first lock (Jamie Whitten Lock) getting ready to go down a whopping 84 feet. We did not really travel together, but rather we would speed up/slow down to arrive at the locks at the same time. The Lockmasters obviously are happier to lock through more boats at one time than many separate lock throughs.

     The picture at the left shows the view up with the lock gates still closed after our long drop. Although the lock was 600 feet long, the view was still kind of like looking up through a tunnel. We had no wait, but the travel time downward seemed long. In the three locks today, the Lockmaster calls ahead to warn the next lock of your arrival. They assume that you are going to traverse these three locks in one day and try to be accommodating.

 

     I mentioned earlier that this part of the waterway is an artificial cut connecting the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers. On the chartplotter we can occasionally see the actual Tombigbee River. Since we are near its head waters it is very small, and it also wanders around a lot. The manmade channel is straight and therefore shorter, but eventually, the river will get big enough that the artificial cut will end. Then we will be back into the more typical wind channel of a natural river.

     During the trip, I saw a large black "mass" in the water about a half mile ahead and had begun to move over to miss what I had thought might be a log. When we got close, I realized that it was a very tightly packed flock of Coots, which are small black ducks. When we got about 200 feet away, they all took flight, and the result is the picture at the right. This same sight was to happen once more today. Back home in Texas we usually have several dozen Coots that winter over and spend a lot of time in the channel in front of our town home each day.

     The second lock (GV "Sonny" Montgomery Lock) had the gates open and the green traffic light on, which meant that we could go directly into the lock. The total time from when the gates began to close behind the third boat to when the gates began to open at the bottom was about 20 minutes. The drop was only 30 feet, but that time was really fast. This "connector" between the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers is only about 25 years old, and the locks, etc. are in excellent shape. The picture at the right shows the Admiral helping to keep Lucky Us parallel to the lock wall. We are tied to a single floating bollard at the middle of the boat so she can "wobble" a bit in the current.

     We got to the last lock, which is the John Rankin Lock, at 3:30 pm, and we did not clear the other side of the lock until 5:30 pm. We had a wait of a little over an hour for an upbound tow to lock through. This was not a big deal since we were only 4.7 miles from our destination at Midway Marina, and we docked at the marina at 6:05 pm. The dam at the Rankin Lock is at least 30 feet higher than the lock, which seems strange. The large triangular framework sticking up is a rotating crane, and it apparently can lift long steel pieces of wall to raise the height of the lock to control flood waters. Making the lock into part of the dam would obviously close the lock, but locks are often closed during floods anyway.

    Shortly after checking in at the marina office, we headed off in the marina courtesy van to go into the town of Fulton in search of a Mexican restaurant, which kind of makes it sound like we are in a rut...  The picture at the left is of the sunset over the marina and the Tombigbee Waterway as we drove out of the marina. I suppose that since it was Sunday evening that the first two restaurants were closed, but the third time was lucky. After a short stop at Walmart, we headed back to Lucky Us and were in bed shortly afterward...