Days 23 and 24 - We Reach Sea Level!!

Shady Acres and Kristin Says planned to leave at first light, about 7 am, but there was fog on the river so we had to wait.  During our wait, Captain Randy had me sprawled over the engine (again!) to get a kink out of our stern electrical cord that was preventing the cable recoiler from recoiling it.  Luckily, I was able to do it and all was well again. 
 

 

After fixing the electrical cord, I went for a walk along the dirt road with Jim and Meg; felt good to stretch my legs. 

 

At 8:45 am, the fog had lifted and we pushed off and went into the Coffeeville Lock, our last lock on the river!  We are now about 20 or so feet above sea level – but it is all “downhill” from hear to Mobile Bay.

The trees are still very green here and our server was right about the scenery today – “there is a bank on the right and another bank on the left” and that’s it.  But it is a beautiful sunny day and warming up quickly. 

Close to 11 am we passed a logging site and the Lowman Power Plant and a few very small homes.  The river is still narrow and curvy.  We are leading today and have to constantly watch for small fishing boats.  Shady Acres has AIS, an automatic ship identification system, so he would see tugs ahead of us and call them to arrange for us to pass. 

 

At 12:40 pm we passed a sailboat we have not seen since Hamm’s Holiday Harbor on the Illinois River – Scotia, the world travelers from Scotland.  They are headed to Mobile and then plan to take their boat thru the Panama Canal.
 

The barge traffic picks up as we get closer to Mobile – as does the number of fishing boats.  At 2:04 pm we passed the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers.  There are more industrial sites and we went under the Dolly Parton Bridge.  There is a low RR bridge that we would have had to call, but is was already raised for a tug behind us. 

We reach Mobile Bay at 4:30 pm and go under the Cochran Bridge.  It is very industrial, not too pretty.  We passed by the city and out into the bay.  At this point, Shady Acres heads east to their destination and we go south and then west to Dog River Marina. 

 

We arrive at 6:03 pm and stay the night at gas dock.  While docking, we see 2 boats right behind us – Success and a second boat from Chicago that is also being delivered to Florida for its owner. 

After filling up our fuel tank and securing the boat to the fuel dock, we walked over to the Mobile Yacht Club for dinner.  MYC was founded in 1847 and is the second oldest yacht club in the United States (the New York Yacht Club is the oldest).  We walked in and were “welcomed” by a number of people who were dressed up in 1920’s flappers costumes (reminded us of the people at DYC who like to dress up).  Turns out the club was having a birthday party in the main part of the club.  We were, however, allowed to go into the bar area and have dinner, which we did – the gumbo and seafood were excellent.  The person in charge of the bar was very friendly and told us about the club’s history and traded a Mobile Yacht Club burgee for a Diversey Yacht Club burgee.

We returned to Kristin Says well fed and happy that we had safely completed the second leg of our journey.  We have now travelled 1166 nautical miles, locked thru 23 locks (and passed over one),  and dropped about 575 feet from lake Michigan to Mobile since we left Diversey harbor on August 19^th.

This is our last entry until we resume our journey on November 22^nd.  We spent November 3^rd cleaning the boat, doing laundry and then flying back to Chicago.