We arrived at our first and only lock for the day (Howell Heflin) at 8:00 a.m. We were in and out in less than 20 minutes. We were able to go through the locks with Tracy, but we are traveling at a faster speed so we arrived at Kingfisher Bay Marina in Demopolis sooner than him. Shelia and I did a short Facebook Live Video at the Heflin lock just before we lost cell signal. After we got down the Tenn-Tom a little further, we were able to do a longer video just talking about our trip. We passed by some neat little cottages and cabins on the river today. There was a beautiful log swing out in the middle of nowhere, just a place to swing and overlook the river. Several of the residents came outside to wave at us as we went by. One guy even got on the radio to say he appreciated us going by at a slow speed. I'm sure they have lots of boats creating huge wakes for them, but we try to reduce our speed when we see fishing boats or docks as we pass by. We arrived at Kingfisher Bay Marina around 1:00 p.m. It started raining on us as we were about to pull in and just as we got to the dock, it came a downpour! A really nice guy (Looper) came over in the pouring down rain to help us tie up. The storm hit and we had to wait a couples hours to even hook our shore power up. There was a brief two hour period where it stopped raining and Shelia and I took the marina courtesy van to Walmart and picked up a few things. We also bought AT&T prepaid phones so we will hopefully have service when our Verizon is too low. It started raining on us as we were leaving the store and pretty much rained the rest of the evening. So, we just chilled out for the rest of the day. Tracy arrived at the marina at 3:00 p.m.
We found out that a recreational boat had capsized and sunk in the Coffeeville Lock this morning. The Lock is closed down until further notice. We heard it was a 40’ boat and the captain reported he had hit something before entering the lock, but didn’t realize he was taking on water. Once he entered the lock, the boat started sinking. He was able to swim to a ladder to climb out and I don’t think anyone else was onboard. They are saying it will take 3-7 days for them to remove the boat and do the cleanup before they reopen. We were supposed to go through this lock on Tuesday, January 11th (two days from now) but we will have to wait to see what happens.
Today we passed by the White Cliffs of Epes near Fort Tombecbe. We were doing a live FB feed as we passed by, so I didn't get any photos, but James did. I will upload them soon.
Howell Heflin Lock
Me driving from the bridge today
Our new Garmin Chartplotter...it shows we had 46 miles to our destination (Kingfisher Marina) and our estimated arrival time at 12:49 p.m. (CST). We were going about 10-11 mph.
