Thursday, May 25, 2017

 We pulled up the anchor and started down the oxbow at about 6:30 this morning. We had to backtrack about 3 miles to the south entrance of the oxbow, because the upper entrance is prone to shoaling, and we didn't want to take a chance of grounding. 

Today was a long day for us - almost 12 hours of running, going through 5 locks, and a total of 68.9 miles.

We locked through at Stennis, Aberdeen, Amory, Wilkins, and Fulton locks. In the first 4 locks, 1 or 2 other boats arrived ahead of us and had to wait on our slower boat to get there so we could go up together. The other captains were nice about it, but I felt bad for making them wait. The faster of the two, a small C-Dory named "Grumpy" was able to stretch his lead and lock through ahead of me at the Amory lock. "Satisfaction", a planing style trawler, got far enough ahead of me that he locked through at Fulton while I was still an hour away. We went solo through the Fulton lock, and caught up with "Satisfaction" at Midway Marina when we got here about 6:15 tonight. 

Here is the screenshot of our track today:

This was a shot as we left the River Front Park anchorage, travelling back down the oxbow toward the Tenn-Tom:

Barges loaded with scrap metal just south of the Stennis Lock in Columbus:

When we passed the "Captain Anthony" pushing all these barges loaded with rock, I radioed him and ask what his load weighed. He took a minute to check his paperwork and reported a NET tonnage of 11,200 TONS!!! (That is 22,400,000 pounds, not counting the tow boat or barge weight! )

We're pretty sure this was a juvenile bald eagle that we saw north of Columbus:

And an osprey taking care of her baby or babies. We could only see one little one. They were just above the Fulton lock.

And finally this cormorant (??) was drying his wings when we passed.

Midway Marina in Fulton, MS. Our little Genesis is at the dock in the center of the picture.

And this is for our grandaughter Abby, who loves willow flies (aka Mayflies). Everything here is covered in them!

Glenda was tired from handling the dinghy at all the locks, so she went to bed early.

We have 56 miles and 3 more locks to go until we turn East on the Tennessee River!