The Continuing Adventures of Mon and Waz

The Adventures of Captain Warren and First Mate Monica. Having completed America's Great Loop in 2014, life doesn't slow down for these intrepid travelers. Each year brings new challenges; some good, some bad, but challenges nonetheless! 2017 sees them renting an apartment while 'Untide' is For Sale. Life on terra firma isn't all it is cracked up to be, but more change is in the wind. Read on for the latest!

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Mile 52.8 to Mile 12, Tensas Cut

 Another foggy morning. It makes us want to just go back to bed and stay there. It is COLD! We are supposed to have temps in the high 60's today. We will see!!!
The early light is lovely on the willows.
 When the sun did come up we could clearly see Gene and his boat further up the river. Small fishing boats whizzed past us here. Just as well we didn't have a line out to one of the trees on the bank, or there might be some dead bodies in the water. They wouldn't be able to see our lines in the dark, even if we had lights or buoys on them.
    On our way finally, as the fog burned off. We backed out of the side river and into the Black Warrior river again.

Waz is pretty sure this is a salt pile, further down river.
More industry as we get closer to Mobile. They were loading steel bars, plates and rolls here.
A roll of steel being loaded into a waiting barge.
The river is driving us nuts, with all its twists and turns. As the crow flies, it isn't that far!
 We are now back into Cypress swamp territory, and we have seen Alligators

Coming up to this plant we could see a whole heap of tows on the AIS. Aieeee... some were working and others standing by. They were very courteous and waited for us to pass, or we waited for them. It works!
Another highway bridge and another sign of coming civilization.


They call this Bridge Dolly Parton Bridge. Can you guess why? Gene is still following us!:)

We love watching these bridges work. I don't think I would like to climb those stairs every day though.
This is a documented anchorage, but there is no way you could fit much in here other than a canoe!
Ahem! Clouds....spell weather coming....and yes, it came.
We left the Tombigbee and turned into Tensas Cut for the night. The turned left off the main cut and into another one. Plenty of space, plenty of water ...well, almost. We wont argue whether 7ft is enough water, at this time of day. We purposely didn't have far to go today, and we were grateful for the break in the endless hours on the river.

A fishing shack on the way in.
We are putting down anchor as Gene in Galene enters the anchorage.
We think he is going a little overboard setting out two anchors at bow, and a rope tied to a tree in the stern. We weren't sure what he was doing, so went over in the dinghy to find out if he needed help. He did, as it turned out. His outboard motor wasn't working properly and he needed to set his auxiliary anchor...so we took it out and dropped it. Well, *I* dropped it...and not to his liking...so we had to pull it up and reset it about 200 feet out. There were mutterings about anal retentives, and all that, lol. but he is the captain, and we were just doing his bidding.:) We were concerned that someone might decapitate themselves if they went through the stern with that rope out there. Even though there is an orange buoy to show he has something in the water, one of those superfast fishing boats might go through there, and the thought of that was not pretty.


Later we were joined by two other boats...one of them was Linda and Ton, on Raydiance. We had invaded their space up in Bay Springs, and spent a couple of pleasant hours aboard their boat, while at anchor there. They were with Our Last Boat. Much discussion was taking place on channel 68 about the need for so many anchors, lines etc. We ended up putting out another forward anchor, with 35knot gusts forecast, and from the north. We are north oriented here, and we did get a lot of wind straight down this little cut.
We went to bed that night....after a busy afternoon putting out our neighbors anchor, and ours and futsing around with all the prep. for the high winds. We hope we don't drag in the night.
Waz did get up to check our position once, I believe. I slept like the proverbial!

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