Holy Shit....yeah I said a naughty....we flipping did it. Well we didn't do it yet, but holy cow we did it. Two weeks ago we pulled back from the dock in Chicago. Today I came in to the dock, no thruster of course, bait fish were jumping, oyster traps were out and that salt water foam was bubbling in prop wash....Mobile Bay. Today was the longest day of the trip. We had hit every lock on the Tenn-Tom waterway up until today perfectly, our last lock of the trip and he made us wait. He was a ......well I will save the naughty words, I already said enough. We twisted and turned down the Tenn-Tom and it just didn't seem that it would ever end. We woke up this morning and the mindset was that we would see the gulf today. Well I think that we were all thinking we would see the gulf by early afternoon. We forgot that it was still a 120 mile day. Finally we hit mile marker 0.0 on the river system. Commercial boats were everywhere. Huge freighters, crazy tug boats....the works.
The river banks peeled away. Marks went from statute to nautical, muddy water turned to... less than muddy water, sea gulls showed up, pelicans started diving, the horizon was empty. There was salt water on the nose. Suddenly we could throw a wake and not worry about the fishing boat around the bend. You couldn't even see the river banks. The river banks were gone. The curvature of the earth was the limit. Where should we go? Where can we go? Better yet, where can't we go? Finally an open body of water. Was the river all that bad? Hell no, the river was great, but finally an open horizon again. Bruce was on the helm I was on the charts and suddenly we were paying attention again. There were no river banks acting as our bumpers at the bowling alley anymore. We could end up in two feet of water without thinking twice.
What an awesome feeling. With still hundreds of miles to go, I have accomplished something that I never dreamed of doing before retirement. I did it.....better yet we did it.
We had crab legs, shrimp, grilled catfish and mahi mahi for dinner. Tomorrow we will have a visit from a mechanic for the thruster pump then we will go from there!
Here are some pictures that I promised:
Alligator!!
84' Drop at the locks. Beginning of the Tenn-Tom waterway
Sunset Mobile Bay...Thats salt water
Arch on Sound Waves, Moon in the background
The dam outside one of the locks, not sure what lock it was. Maybe the....Fulton?
Bottom of the Whittman.....84' drop
Top of the Whittman.....84' drop to come
Sound Waves Out
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