Arrived in Demopolis

Why did we get up at five o'clock this morning and then not leave until 7:15?  Oh that's right, because we were socked in with fog!  Why does that always happen when we plan early departures.  We intended on leaving at 5:30 a.m.  Fog creates quite an optical illusion.  Bob called on the VHF radio to tell us there was a north bound tow right beside him.  Bob was anchored probably a football field distance behind us.  We could not see Bob in the fog.  Linda could faintly see the tow in the distance, but thought it was way behind us and Bob yet when all of the sudden the front barge he was pushing was right beside us.  Of course we announced on the VHF radio before the "Curtis Taylor" tow got to us that we were anchored outside the river channel there behind the red buoys.  He was kind enough to announce to other tow operators that we were there also.  Just as we were pulling out we heard other tows talking on the VHF radio.  The one was saying "Well if I passed them, I didn't see them in this fog and they didn't show up on my radar."  We immediately got on the VHF radio to announce to him, "Ashleigh", that we were just pulling out into the channel with our location.  It ends up he was right behind us.  So we kicked up a little extra speed today trying to catch "Curtis Taylor" who had about an hour head start on us, get some distance in front of "Ashleigh" so we wouldn't have to wait on both of them to get through Demopolis Lock before we could, and to run out as much gas as we thought we could so less will have to be siphoned out for the transition into diesel tanks.  We ended up having to wait over an hour for "Curtis Taylor" to get through Demopolis Lock, and then our lift seemed awfully slow, maybe because they are working on the lock.  Finally, at 3:45 p.m. we were on the last 35 minute home stretch to arrive at Demopolis Yacht Basin, our summer home.  Ray's brother Daryll had been waiting for us here for hours after kindly dropping off our new diesel engines and generator he picked up for us in Pensacola on his way home from his first hitch on his new job working offshore on tows in the Gulf of Mexico.  We spent a couple hours with him before he traveled on to get home.