Underway Again!!!

1/19/20

After 2-1/2 months in a yard and marina we got underway again this morning.  It felt good to pull the lines aboard and back away from the dock in the rising sun.  Our adventure continues.

We departed the great marina and yard at Aqua Yacht Harbor and started down the Tombigbee waterway towards Mobile, AL.  The first twenty miles or so is a manmade cut through the divide between the Tennessee and Tombigbee watersheds, known as the divide cut.  The two photos below show the general view in this region, where the waterway is straight and has high levees on both sides.

Along the way we passed Goat Island, a small islet across from a small state park campground.  I had heard a tornado had passed through here, and sure enough there was a large oak tree that had toppled onto the concrete block bathrooms, demolishing the structure.  This happened in mid-December while we were staying on the boat in the yard.  We were thankful it missed us as tipping the boat over with us in it would not have been fun.

This day we traveled 50 miles and transited three locks.  The first of these, the James Whitten Lock, is the highest lift on the Tombigbee at 85 feet.  The photos below show the lock both before we were locked down, and at the end of the drop.  I never cease to be amazed by these simple machines that do so much work.

The Whitten lock was the site of a large oil spill this past summer.  A barge carrying crude oil was accidentally punctured inside the lock.  About 132,000 gallons of oil was spilled inside the lock, effectively closing it and the entire waterway for about four weeks.  In a sense it was lucky it happened here as the spilled oil was contained inside the lock with the chamber doors closed, avoiding a massive spill polluting the river.  The remaining oil in the barge was first pumped out (it held over 400,000 gallons), then the oil floating in the lock was removed, the barges and tugs were cleaned and removed from the lock, and finally the lock had to be completely drained and cleaned before it could be put back in operation.  That was a huge undertaking.  As we were transiting down in the lock I noticed slight residue on some of the structure, more like grime than oil that could have been further cleaned.  I got a photo of some of it which is below.

We are docked tonight at Midway Marina in Fulton.  Tomorrow we will start early to continue down the river.