Day 21 - A Gloomy Halloween on the River

Happy Halloween!  We are up at 6 am to check the weather, which was overcast, warm and getting windy.  The forecast was for heavy rain and strong winds (gusts up to 60 mph).  But Randy decided that the weather would not reach us until the afternoon and that given its track, we would be fine moving south.  So we headed out and made it to the John Stennis Lock at 7:10 am.  We were in by 7:22 am and out by 7:41am – good start!  A few miles out of the lock we pass another Kinder Morgan facility and the Lowndes County Port (MM 330).  We past our first boat, a tug with no load at MM 329.  We saw not other boats – it appears that everyone else was nervous about the forecast and stayed in port.

Soon we saw the first few houses of the day – one large one with a large boat in front reminds of us the intercoastal waterway in Florida with boats bigger than the homes that sit behind them.  The Tombigbee River is winding now and we are in a more deserted stretch.  We see lots of egrets and blue herons. At 8:30 am we are 1000 statute miles (by river) from Chicago, we will pass 1000 nautical miles tomorrow.  It starts to rain very lightly at 9:10 am, but does not last long.  We finally see another recreational boat, a small pontoon that was fishing.

 

We arrive at the Tom Bevill Lock and Dam at 9:35 am.  Just north of the lock is a large riverboat, the Montgomery, sitting up on shore.  We are not sure if this boat is being used at all as a museum or something else.  We had to wait for a northbound tug to come through, but once it was gone we were in and out of the lock in 15 minutes.  It is 40 miles to the third and final lock of the day.

By 11 am it is less windy and wavy and we seem to be moving away from the storm, which is about 30 miles west of us and tacking from the southwest to northeast. Other than a few sprinkles of rain when we finally reach Demopolis, there is no more rain today. 

We past the Westerbelt Reliable Energy plant and a couple of other commercial sites.  There are more stilt homes now.  At 12:40 pm we see the first cruising boat of the day, a sailboat named Last Dance.  We get to the Howell Heflin Lock at 1 pm, but have to wait for the sailboat to lock through.  We now have 51 miles to Demopolis, our destination for today. 

 

The river banks are white rock now – looks like limestone, and there are a few industrial sites here.  The barge traffic is picking up as we near Demopolis, including one coming at us from the Black Warrior River, where it meets the Tombigbee.

Demopolis (population 7292) was settled in 1817 by French expatriates who wanted to grow olives and grapes.  It was incorporated in 1821, then bought out by Americans who started large cotton plantations.  The town offered major operational support to the Confederate Army during the Civil War.  Cotton was still “king” after the war.  Today, paper, cement and lumber are the main industries.  Beef cattle and catfish aquaculture are the major farming activities.

We arrive at Kingfisher Bay Marina at Demopolis at 4:45 pm.  As we approach the fuel dock we see a dancing witch, complete with broomstick, entertaining the passing boats.  We no sooner tied up the boat when someone called “Randy” – it was a boater Randy knew from Chicago who had worked as a captain for Captain Al out of Burnham Harbor.  He was taking a boat to Florida – what a small world.  After getting settled in a slip we are invited to a “Looper’s Party” in the marina pavilion.  We met a few boaters but everyone scattered after a short time as the mosquitoes were eating us alive!  Tired after a long day, we had dinner on the boat that night.