October 14 – 17, 2019
It’s Sunday Oct. 13th, the generator is fixed, Serenity Blue is washed, fueled and ready to press on. But where to next? Originally we planned to continue up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga, go home for a few days and then return down the Tennessee River to where we are now, Aqua. We sensed that is not what God wanted us to do, so we set our sights on salt water. (#13 Listening to God is essential to walking with God).
We are at the junction of where one could continue up bound on the Tennessee River or down bound on the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway/Canal toward Mobile, AL. For this voyage, it will be toward Mobile and salt water. With that settled we decided to enjoy Sunday in Iuka, MS. After lunch we took the courtesy car to a grocery store called Brooks, a small version of Whole Foods, where we found many good things to bring back to the boat to eat. Then Greg took the dinghy and motored around the harbor to break in the new Honda outboard. As the sun began to set, he headed back to the boat to watch some football while Maggie cooked dinner.
The plan was to make it all the way to Midway Marina today, Monday,Oct. 14th. We were up early and set to go but guess what, we are fogged in again. So we wait. Around 9:30 we could see enough to ease our way to the fuel dock where we have our holding tanks pumped out and wait for the remainder of the fog to lift.
No buddy boats with us as we shove off at 10:10am. We soon enter the narrow divided cut section where we really need our AIS (Automatic Identification System) to see and be seen by the tows. But it decided to take the day off, rats, this is no time for this essential piece of equipment to malfunction. We came upon a sailboat doing 6 knots, he calls a tow on the VHF and we realize he has AIS. We stayed with him until the tow passes. His speed is too slow for us so we bid him farewell and press on sans AIS. (#9 Trusting God means looking beyond what we can see to what God sees). Once we got to the marina, Greg was able to reboot the system and get it up and running again.
As we approached Whitten Lock we were informed that there would be a delay of several hours. Considering we had two more locks beyond Whitten before we arrive at Midway Marina and the days are getting short, we opted to take a slip at Bay Springs Marina just above Whitten Lock.
Talk about remote, Bay Springs doesn’t offer a courtesy car but if its an emergency they will take you into town which is 30 minutes away. Nice peaceful place, for a day.
We met a couple on a homemade pontoon boat traveling with their dog. They started in Chicago headed for Panama City, FL. Tomorrow morning we will buddy boat with them through three locks to Midway Marina.
The next morning the pontoon boat called us at 7am to say he just spoke with Whitten Lock and they need us to come NOW. So starts the morning fire drill which will become routine each morning until we get to Mobile. Greg first starts the engines and then disconnects the shore power and stows the power cord, while Maggie starts to wipe the dew off the isinglass in the flybridge to see our way. Greg then heads up to the flybridge to fire up all the navigation electronics and Maggie starts to cast off all our dock lines. Once she says we are all clear, we begin our exit from the slip and on our way. Normally, this process takes us 20 minutes but today, with the lock master requesting our presence, we do it in 10 minutes max.
We enter the Whitten Lock with our pontoon boat buddy and a power catamaran ‘Cat-n-Dogs’. Together the three of us buddy boat through Whitten, Montgomery and Rankin locks. The weather was getting iffy and as we approached Midway Marina around 10:30am we decided to take refuge while our two buddy boats continued on. The rain began shortly after we were secured and the forecast for tomorrow was 25 knot winds so we decided to stay put an extra day. We took the courtesy car into the town of Fulton, MS and a tour of the local Walmart for a few essentials.
On October 17th with six other Loopers at Midway Marina we call the Fulton Lock and request passage, they reply ok but you need to come NOW. So begins the fire drill again at 7am.
We buddy boat with ‘The Answer’, ‘Paddy Wagon’, ‘Bahama Voyager’, ‘Unwinding’, ‘Corkscrew’ and ‘9 1/2’ through four locks, Fulton, Wilkins, Amory and Aberdeen. After the fourth lock ‘Serenity Blue’ and ‘Unwinding’ need to burn off some carbon so we take off at 14mph vs our normal 10, arriving Columbus Marina at 3:30pm.
Again we are assigned a nice covered slip, which is good as we will be leaving Serenity Blue here for 3 weeks while we make our way back home so Greg can attend an important annual meeting at our church. Columbus, MS is the best jumping off place as we need a one-way rental car and they have a small commercial airport here. Beyond Columbus it begins to get really remote and harder to get the rental car.
Our dear friend Lisa King, procures a car rental for us via her travel agency and the next day we head back to Grand Rivers, KY to pick up our truck. Our gold Looper friends, Byron & Cynthia, host us for the night. The next day we drive both the truck and rental to the Nashville airport, drop off the rental and continue to Atlanta via our vehicle. Complicated but it worked.
