Day 3

It's 5:30 AM in the morning on Day 3 of QCs voyage home. It's first light and when I looked out the window this is what I saw.

A towboat floating on black glass, lights showing in the first mornings light. The rivers not glass but it certainly looks like it.

The water at this point is still brown from the storm water runoff of the previous week.

The temperature during the day was reaching the high 80s.

This wet sand volleyball court certainly looked inviting.

A look back downriver.

Here the water looks still, but if you look at the green channel marker you can see the 2 1/2 to 3 MPH current moving downstream which reduces our all important Speed Over Ground (SOG) to 5.5 MPH.

At this point we're starting to see you and occasional home on the side.

We saw our first power-plant Vivian asked me what happens to all the ashes from the burned coal. My comment was they had to be disposed of. Here is one way that it's disposed of building a mountain out of coal ash (small when the pile is started like here) which is referred to as fly ash. It can be pretty nasty stuff and here's a link if you want to know more: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash

At home ALCOA operates a power-plant and their pile of Fly Ash is one big pile....

An Army Corps of Engineers boat in this picture is surveying the river bottom for dredging purposes. Given the storms that we have been experiencing the rivers in our region and the Intercoastal waterways of Florida are becoming silted and navigation channels must be dredged to enable navigation. Our boat only needs 3 to 4 feet of water to remain ungrounded but towboats need a minimum of 9 feet.

A commercial towboat capable of controlling a large fleet of barges need tremendous horsepower and connection to the water. Their propellers can measure in excess of 72 inches. Their engines range in horsepower from 500 to 4000. Needless to say, we stay out of their way.

Grinding up trees for wood pulp is a major industry in this area.

This area of the river was very unique. If you zoom on the picture you will notice that from the water line up to where the vegetation starts is solid rock. It must be very hard or else you would think plants would be able to embed their roots into it and Ivy and other kinds of plants would be able to flourish.

Viv took on the task of removing some adhesive Velcro strips that the previous owner had used to secure cushions on top of the forward cargo boxes. It was very slow going with lots of goo gone and scraping to remove the residue.

Bridges start to appear when you get two more populated areas.

And industry needs a source of water and the river is available.

Building anything on top of this bluff would certainly be dangerous.

But at this location, solid rock must provide the owner with much peace of mind.

Third day is starting to wind down with us reaching our goal of getting past the second dam at Demopolis. Here the lock is located on the right and the dam on the left.

In this picture you can see the major leak that is occurring in the forward lock gates. Unfortunately years sending billions of tax dollars overseas has left our water transportation resources in dire need of repair.

When you enter unlock from the downstream side, you're entering a concrete canyon.

We tie off to floating Bollards that will rise with us as the water level increases.

The leak in the forward lock gate is quite evident here.

And here....

Once the water in the lock reaches the top the scenery changes.

On the upstream side of the lock the water is still slick as glass.

The towns new water tower.

And it's old....

Demopolis has a nice marina available. 

We ended our day anchor off the river in an the old river channel of the Tombigbee River at mile 223. The location was suggested by a passing towboat captain and it was a relief to be off the main river channel and in the shallow water.  

Shallow water is important because towboats and commercial boats cannot operate in shallow water but we can. It make for a safe and secure location to anchor.