Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht to Bay Springs Marina to Columbus to Lower Cooks Anchorage

On Wednesday, October 29, we were anxious to head out after being in one place for a week. Having all of the maintenance and repairs now done, we left at 9:30 hoping for a weather window before the next rain started. We headed to Bay Springs Marina in New Site, Mississippi in order to be in a good spot for the next morning's entrance into the Tenessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Unfortunately it rained off and on so it was a bit of a miserable ride but the wind wasn't bad when we docked at Bay Springs that afternoon. We took the courtesy car into Belmont, MS to the Piggly Wiggly for groceries and then ate at Viva LaCasita Mexican restaurant downtown for dinner. We also went to the Downtown Bakery and got there just at closing and the owner gave us 2 free scones! Next door was Belmont Coffee so bought some of that to go with the scones for next morning's breakfast.

Thursday morning we called the lock at 6:30 am and they said if we got there by 7 we could get through, otherwise they were going to do maintenance all morning. So we hustled over to the Jamie Whitten lock. This is the first of 10 locks on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom for short), a 234 mile artificial waterway completed in 1984 connecting the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River. This lock is the biggest drop of all of them, at about 80 feet. After this we had 2 more locks, Montgomery and Rankin, which we had to wait a bit for due to tugs and a barge, but we still made it to Midway Marina, near Fulton, MS at about 1:30. Midway has a restaurant, Guy's Place on the Water which had excellent food and service so we had dinner there and then watched the sunset from the boat.

On Friday, October 31, we had planned to leave at 7 as we had 4 locks to get through on our way to Columbus Marina in Columbus, MS. However, it was pretty foggy so we held off until 8:00, although, should have waited a little longer. There were 7 others who headed out and it looked like the fog was clearing , but it was quite low visibility on the way to nearby Fulton Lock. We all creeped along and the sun cleared the fog by the time we were all in the lock. Below is a photo of the sun shining through the spider webs when we got to the lock. We had to wait for a tug in the next lock, Glover Wilkins. The third lock, Cochran, was no wait and the same for Aberdeen Lock. By this time it was 4:00 and we decided to speed up so we could get to Columbus before dark and we got there by 5 pm. We stood on the docks with a few others for "dock-tails" and then had leftovers on our boat and watched Game 6 of the World Series. When I was taking a photo of our boat there, I noticed how large many of the other boats are. I use to think our boat was large, but not anymore! We stayed 2 nights in Columbus. Saturday morning we saw a fisherman catch a 15 pound catfish at the lock and dam. He had a device to weigh it and then he threw it back. I think he was part of a fishing tournament. We went into town by Uber Saturday late afternoon to see some of the Historic Downtown area. There is also a nice River Walk. Apparently the playwright, Tennesee Williams is from there so snapped a photo of his house. There is also Catfish Alley, Blues history and Civil War history. We had dinner at Harvey's, a local establishment that has been around 40 or so years and Harvey and his business partner's photo from the 80s is on the wall. John gave us lots of history of the place as he had been there from the beginning. He posed for a photo out front.

On Sunday, we worshiped with our church online. It was All Saints Day and our church read the names of those members, and relatives and friends of members ,who have died the past year. Tim's Mom, Prudence, passed away last December so we got to hear her name read. We left Columbus Marina about 9 and waited with another boat for the first lock of 2 today, the John C. Stennis Lock. By the way, these locks all are named for politicians who helped get the Tenn-Tom financed and built. The second lock of the day was the Tom Bevill and we made it through there with 3 other boats fairly quickly. Then we were on to our first anchorage since we had our leaking generator fixed. The anchorages have been researched by other boaters so that you know they are deep enough. We arrived at Lower Cooks Anchorage on an "oxbow", a U-shaped bend in the river, at about 2:15. We entered at 40 feet and anchored in about 20 feet of water. Two other boats anchored there as well. We arrived in time to finish watching the Packers who sadly lost to the Panthers. The generator performed beautifully and we had soup for dinner. We slept amazingly well and we had an anchor alarm on just in case so that if the anchor did break away we would know! The next morning, when we pulled it up, it was caked in more mud than I have seen on the Mississippi, so it definitely held well! By the way, we are now in Alabama! I imagine we will be in the Gulf within a week! More on that in the next blog!