The end of the TennTom!

We are finishing the 450 miles of the TennTom tomorrow.  Our hope was to hit Mobile Bay today but 30 mph winds have kept us inland.  We don’t want our first experience with the “big water” to be with 30 mph winds.  A cold front came through last night with rain and today wind!  Supposed to be in the 30’s in Mobile tonight!  Just can’t seem to rid ourselves of MN cold.  Actually it has been beautiful!  By the weekend it is to be in the high 60’s.  At the end of the TennTom we were almost going in circles as you can see from the screen shot of the chart plotter.  Yesterday we kept meeting ourselves, today we are going in circles!

Just wanted to share some more pictures of our trip down the TennTom!  

Evening and morning views from Bobby's!

The last lock until we head up the east coast!  Whew!  There were surely a lot of them,  48 in all(so far)!  We even had a little white winged friend join us on the last lock!

As we were approaching  one of the switch back bends, our buddy boat CBAY called to tell me there was a really tight squeeze between the red and green buoys!  This picture is looking backward at the buoys.  In this section of the river red is on the left.  Ha! Ha!  The green was out of place - I knew it as soon as I saw it!  

 

 We are still seeing beautiful fall colors!  Nature has so much beauty, even a wall of sliding sand, a pile of rocks and a cliff know as “Lover’s Leap” are spectacular.  The last picture of this sand beach gives us a hint of what we will see when we reach the Gulf Coast of Florida!  Oh how we love white sand beaches!  Be prepared for lots of beach pictures in addition to my sunrises and sunset pictures.  Humor me! 

These tows can really sneak up on you as you navigate this winding river.  This is our friends in CBAY!  Whoops!  Better hold up!  The day before it was us that was in the same position.  The tow we were meeting was longer so we needed to halt and actually reverse until the tow captain could give us instructions to pass.  Even though we knew it was coming towards us a few miles away, you can’t see it in these curves until it is there.  CBAY wanted to know if I had to go downstairs and change clothes.  :>) 

Then you have a tiny tow like the one at this construction site!

The last hint of the day that we are approaching the gulf are these brown Pelicans!  We are at MM 12.2 meaning we are only 12 miles from Mobile Bay.  We are in brackish water now and had to notify our insurance company that we had left Demopolis as that is when salt water coverage begins.  That means more money to insure the boat while it is in salt water.  We turned into the anchorage at Big Briar Creek, on the Tensas cut off!  As I previously stated, the wind was gale force here.  Tried to raft CBAY up to us but after 3 attempts, we decided they should drop their own anchor.  This is a first for them!  Ken dropped the dinghy and helped them get settled.  We spent the afternoon in beautiful sunshine, spinning around our anchors.  Hope it settles down by night fall or I will have a restless night’s sleep.

The captain is playing in the engine room and I am playing with charts!  New waters tomorrow mean new charts, different ways to read them and the need to plot on paper what we expect to see on the chart plotter - always a double check.  I loaded the Navionics charts on my iPad so we actually have a triple check.  Love that iPad!  For $49.95 I have as much detail as is on the chart plotter in the helm+!  And.............it gives me my morning StarTribune so I can still read the paper while having my morning coffee! 

To date we have traveled 2077 miles!       Livin' the dream - Pat