Heading to the Gulf: the Tombigbee Waterway

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Cypress trees along the Tombigbee.

After the Rendezvous ended, we departed Rogersville, passed through the fearsome. Wilson lock once again, stopped overnight in Florence, Alabama, where we reunited with our friends on Cavalier before heading back down the Tennessee river to Aqua Yacht in Iuka, Mississippi.

Kate, Melissa and Martin (Cavalier) with Martin's souvenir shirt

After tying up at Aqua Yacht, there was a power outage which lasted for several hours. (That marina never fails to disappoint.) We took the occasion to have a nice docktails with some new friends from La La 3 and Cavalier. Power was finally restored late in the evening and the next morning we were able to say goodbye forever to Aqua Yacht. The Tombigbee Waterway is a relatively recent and large addition to navigable waterways in the US. The idea of connecting rivers with locks and canals to allow an alternative method to reach the Gulf of Mexico other than on the somewhat unruly Mississippi river is an age old idea, which was finally completed in 1984. Total cost for this project was $2 billion. The Waterway extends 234 miles between the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers with nine connecting locks. This was a really beautiful cruise along a very tame, for the most part, waterway with a lot of great surrounding scenery and small towns in Mississippi and Alabama. While the waterway was conceived as mostly a commercial product project, the barge traffic is relatively light compared to what we experienced on the Illinois Mississippi, and Tennessee rivers. Transitioning, the locks was a little wearying but much better than the locks on the Tennessee. We were bouyed by the knowledge that once we completed these locks, we would have finished the required 105 locks to complete the great loop.

Bay Springs panorama

Our first stop after we pass the gateway to the Tombigbee waterway was the town of Bay Springs and specifically the Bay Springs Marina. La La 3 anchored adjacent to the marina, and we expect to travel with them for at least several additional days. Large houseboats at the Bay Springs marina were impressive. The start of fall colors was also apparent as we set the clocks back an hour and enjoyed an extra hour of sleep. The days, however, are becoming increasingly shorter, and we have really moved to a solar clock to burn as much daylight as possible.