Day 31: Demopolis to Bobby's Fish Camp

The Tenn-Tom Waterway ended yesterday as we cruised past the confluence of the Black Warrior River at Demopolis, and turned into the Kingfisher Bay Marina. From here, we'll be officially on the Tombigbee River, not the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

Today, we're up and ready by 0500, but there's a couple of barge tows down at the Lock, so we cool our heels. The pre-dawn shows a clear sky and no fog. At 0600 we hear the Lockmaster on the radio say he's planning to tell the rec vessels (that's us... all 30-odd of us) to come down and be ready in 40 minutes. We fire up, cast off, and are #2 away from the marina and into the river. We lurk at the Lock for 30 min then, when called in, we slip through a curtain of developing river-mist, to enter the chamber as #1 on the port-side wall. We wait as a dozen following boats come in - some of them having to raft-up, including one to our starboard side.

We drop 40 ft, and once the gates open, we're off and away. This will be a long sector today, so we're running at close to 1,700 rpm to get the river behind us. Apparently, Bobby's used to have a great restaurant, but it became too much for the family and closed in 2020. But for us it is--at least--a dock to tie up to, which is preferable to anchoring.

There are two other boats at Bobby's when we arrive, and we tie up on the available dock space - half-on and half-off the dock. Two more vessels arrive after us and raft up to the other two ahead of us. We are not a good raft host, since we have an unstable mooring. The local Labrador brings his rock to me to throw, and I make the mistake of doing so. He's my mate for life, and I have I throw it 400 times before I make it back to the boat, and safety. I feel like a baseball pitcher at the end of a ballgame.

Tomorrow, we have the Coffeeville Lock, just down from the fish camp. This will drop us to tidewater... yikes, we're still more than 110 miles away from Mobile Bay!Read more