Woke again before day break to get to the Demopolis Lock by 6:00am! Used the spotlight to get us out of the marina and back into the river. Too early for pictures, all I got was black!!
We have ten other boats traveling with us today. Dropping 40 feet, we left the lock like ducks in a row, passing the rapids which this lock and dam bypasses.
Today we are on the Black Warrior section of the TennTom. The Blackwater River runs 200 miles through northeast Alabama to join the Tombigbee River at Demopolis, AL., then continues for another 216 miles running south to Mobile, AL.
The river shoreline continues to be forested and there are still some white bluffs on this section of the river, just not as tall!
The TennTom takes some tight bends as we travel south for a while, but it straightens out a bit. We like when the rivers are straight !!
After a straight away of about 8 miles, we again wove our way through more river oxbows for another 5 miles. Then the river widened and the current is more evident as we move south.
In the meantime, the sun came out with clear blue skies and the day warmed to 69 degrees.
Our company on the river today was 4 tows and barges along with our fellow Loopers.
We anchored outside Okatuppa Creek with General Fun and enjoyed a lovely sunset and sharing of boating stories.
Here are some drone shots of our anchorage.
Day 178 2nd year November 17 On to Bama Cut Off Miles 65 Total Miles 5505
We were greeted by a clear sunny morning and lots of tows and barges- three to be exact. So we waited at anchor for two of them to pass. Thought we could sneak in between the second and third, but fog made us abandon that plan. We pulled over to let the third barge pass.
We then played follow our tug leader down to the lock. The lock informed us he was bringing up one tow and we had the three in front of us to go down. It’s going to be a long wait.
Good news! The lock master is going to lock us thru in between barges, so we rafted up at a fish camp dock called Bobby’s so the barge and tow in the lock could pass the down river tow. A good place for us to be out of the way.
Finally entered the last of the locks on the TennTom called Coffeeville Lock and Dam at 9:30. It took us two and one half hours to travel 7 miles!
This lock had a cormorant on a log to greet us and sentinels of Great White Herons guarding the front gate and one side of the lock. One even rode the door as it opened. Must be good fishing in this lock!
We dropped 34 feet and left the lock to continue on, doing the happy dance to have the locks behind us. We are now in tidal brackish water, leaving the freshwater behind.
Here the river takes on many winding turns some with wide sand bars on the inside turns and others with tall sand or clay bluffs on the outside of the bends. Among these many turns we passed the tow and barge Tommy’s Terminal once again. Over the past two days, we seem to pass him once each day.
We loved the captains chair which someone had placed on the beach.
Along the shore we saw acres of piled logs stacked up and being sprinkled. After some research, we discovered that the Alabama lumber industry supplies 14 billion dollars in lumber, wood pulp, paper and wood pellets yearly. We also passed two quarry operations for sand, crushed stone and bentonite, a soft plastic clay used for purifying during drilling.
The following are shots of the shoreline.
We saw our first alligator and another bald eagle toward the end of our trip today.
Finally got to the Bama River Cut Off and pulled into the channel to anchor. General Fun rafted to us again. It was a very long day and we anchored just before dusk.
Bill put the drone up to get a few shots of the anchorage and then we were joined by Surf Rider for a short docktails. Bill and I shared our favorite anchorages around Clearwater.
After a quick dinner we all hit the sack!
