The dam at Demopolis (a few days ago) was pretty neat as it seemed to just be a wall of concrete with no gates and the water spilled over rocks at the bottom. We are still encountering tows but the two boats ahead of us have an AIS (Automatic Identification System) so the tows can see them and they can see the tows) so with us following, it's a no brainer, no stress day - unlike when we just peer around the next bend to see if we can spot the front any tow boat barges! The river continues to have many twists and turns as is evidenced by the pic of the gps: note the scale of 800 feet and the miles it took to go essentially 800 ft (if they had only dug a trench!) These turns and bends are everywhere so when we are on our own, we call on the radio that "a southbound pleasure craft is entering the turn at Mile xx" so the tows will know we are coming. Seems to work well!
Friday's anchorage was a welcome sight - a short 'creek' that allowed us to be off of the river and tucked safely away from tows and winds. It was nearly dark by the time we were settled. And then up early the next morning to another beautiful day (once the fog cleared) with a flat river to enjoy. Even more clear reflections than ever!
Steve continued working on the porthole as we traveled - as well as putting another coat on the walkaround deck where I had patched it. Good thing too as it was forecast to rain in a day or two. We made it through the LAST LOCK!!! and were now in saltwater. We spotted lots of sand as soon as we were through the lock so we knew we must be south :-) The anchorage Sat night was at the old lock #1 - very quiet and peaceful.
Steve started looking for alligators (his theory is since we are now at sea level we should see some - right!) and hard as it was for me to believe - there was a 5 ft alligator on shore! No more spotted the rest of the trip to Mobile. Sun night's anchorage was again very secluded - although the other two boats caught up with and shared our small river. We always use a trip line on the anchor which allows us to pull it up backwards if it should get stuck on a tree or something - which is what Steve is trying to fish out of the water with the boat hook. And then the rain started - as scheduled. So it rained most of Sunday night, most of Monday and Monday night. Finally it stopped this morning so off we headed after spending two nights at this anchorage.
A really early start today (no fog so we left at 7:30 boat time) and continuing landscape changes made the 65 mile day seems short. The shore is now marshland and we are nearly at the mouth of the Mobile River with downtown Mobile finally visible!
This is a HUGE port - with lots of ocean going vessels, tugboats and big loading/unloading equipment. We're docked right downtown at the convention center and just watch the huge ships pass within 200 yards of us.
Steve made a great dinner tonight - on the aft deck on the coleman stove. Seems we have a diesel fuel leak in the generator so this will be a good place to repair it. In the meantime, we have figured out that we were very used to just having electricity whenever we wanted it! Personally I think it was the 3 1/2 hours we ran the generator at the last anchorage that did it in. But we were able to see the Browns game - great game even though we ended up loosing. Frustrating though.Tomorrow: on to our marina on Dog River!
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