On the water cruising - Again!
25 January 2020 | Midway Harbour
John Robin | 3 C, 39 F
Chilly Cruisin!
It was great to get off the dock, and start cruising again. After a very busy 6 days of work, and one day of sightseeing/ grocery shopping we are away from the dock. Our last day of boating in September was over 100 degrees F, and the water was 92 degrees. You may recall my generator kept tripping out on high temperature because of the water. Now we are heading south on the Tombigbee Waterway at 40 degrees F and water is 52 degrees. No real desire to go swimming!
The plan at this time is to push south until we can walk around in shorts! Today we should have left at 0800, but as we were ready to slip lines, my navigation computer started an automatic upgrade of all its charts. Darn, that a 1.2 gig upload. Don't want to do that on our phone plans, even in the US. So we just poured another coffee, went for a walk and chilled. It is nice to have updated charts on a trip like this. Forty five minutes later it was done, and we slipped lines at 0900.
3 hours later we arrived at the first lock. This is the one that had a 140,000 gallon oil spill last September, and ended our cruising year. We dropped 65 feet in this huge lock. It must have been a heck of a clean up.
Going downriver, there were two more locks in our day. Sunset is at 5:30, so we try and anchor around 4:30. We arrived at the last lock at 4:30 with the plan of anchoring in 3 miles. Just as we tied up, the lock-master said he was going to wait 30 minutes for another boat. Darn, we departed the lock at dusk, and had to navigate to our first nights anchorage in the dark. Good practice for us both!
Now we are sitting at anchor, in a cute little bay, having a glass of wine, and happy to be cruising again
The photo is Eagle Heart waiting for update to break away from dock!