Day Six

beckygarrison66
Nov 20, 2020
3 min read

11/19/20

The Day of Locks!

We started early again this morning by pulling up anchor and leaving at 6:00 a.m. The sun wasn’t up yet and there was a little fog on the water, but we could see well. We were only five miles from our first lock. We had six locks to go through today. Our first was Amory Lock and a call to the lockmaster and he said he had the gates open and waiting for us! We arrived at 6:30 am and were through by 6:50 am! The second lock was Wilkins Lock (mm 376.1) and we arrived at 7:22 am and were through by 7:43 am! The third lock was Fulton Lock (mm 391) and we arrived at 9:10 am and were through by 9:25 am! This one was a little rough. It was very windy and we struggled to get the boat up to the wall. I had looped the pin, but had to release because of the wind and we moved up to the next pin. The fourth lock was Rankin Lock (mm 398.4) and we arrived at 10:07 am but had to wait about 10 minutes because they were working on the locks. We entered around 10:20 and were locked through by 10:42 am. The fifth lock was Montgomery Lock (406.7) and we arrived at 11:30 am and were locked through by 11:50 am! Our friend, Billy Kilgore was waiting for us at the top of the Lock to take some photos as we passed by. Thanks Billy! Our sixth and final lock was Whitten Lock (mm 411.9) and this was our last lock of the day and last lock on the Tenn-Tom. This was the highest lock on this trip that we went through so far. We arrived at 2:45 pm and locked through at 3:20 pm. We had a very successful day with the Locks today! We went through 6 Locks + 41 miles in 6 ½ hours!

Our goal was to get through all 6 Locks today and make it to Aqua Yacht Harbor Marina for the evening. We called the marina to reserve a transient slip and they said the gas pumps close at 4:30 so we were burning some extra fuel to make it before they closed. We actually made it there 4:00 pm. We have 5 fuel tanks on the boat, but 3 were still full. We filled the 2 that we were using and they held 697 gallons! Whew! And we still have 400 miles to go! Our generator stopped on us today, so we didn’t have any power all day. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and just kept on cruising. (James fixed the generator when we got to Aqua Yacht Marina). We also saw another bald eagle flying in front of us and I was able to get a photo from the video I took. The only downside to our trip today was that we didn’t have much cell signal so not much texting and no facetiming with my kiddos  We hit our halfway point today! We have traveled 421 miles so far! (Check out my chalkboard)

Tonight was a special treat! Our friends (my BFF from childhood) Mary & Stephen Donahue drove 2 hours from Memphis to come hang out with us! We had an awesome night and a lot of laughs! We had planned to eat at the marina restaurant, but it was closed so I made taco salad for dinner. We stayed up later than our usual bedtime, but we still had to rise and shine at 5 am! I am trying to do a few updates on Facebook and write in the blog in the evenings. I haven’t figured out how “chat” or “text” in the blog yet, but I enjoy all the posts and texts from everyone on Facebook!

Happy Birthday to my baby sister Karen Riffey!!

Feeling very blessed!!

Sunrise on the river