We are so young

Good morning Demopolis.  Good bye Demopolis.  The best thing about Demopolis was that we got accused of being 30 and 35 years old!  Just about the time Ray headed to the nice facilities at the new Kingfisher Marina section of Demopolis Yacht Basin, the lock master announced over the VHF radio looking for down bound RVs.  I wasn’t sure if we were that ready since it wasn’t even six o’clock yet.  It was decided we would go though, so by 6:30 a.m. we were in Demopolis Lock.  We were glad we did as the next vessel to request lockage was met with sarcasm and grief from the lock master for not being in the first group (there were two of us, including “Tumbleweed”), and because is vessel name was “Easy” (not sure of the spelling because we have yet to see it~must be even slower than we are).  You see, the operator aboard “Easy” is proper on the VHF radio and says “over” after each transmission.  Well that sounds funny when he is hailing a lock, or tow, or another vessel, etc. as he says “(enter name here), this is Easy, over”.  So the lock master found that to be an open invitation for more banter.

This is what it looks like when there's at tow across the river in front of you

It was another busy day of commercial traffic on the river.  Even Fred at Demopolis Yacht Basin mentioned how busy the commercial traffic has been lately.  We talked to him a little bit about the government shut-down and that it actually was proposed to shut down the locks, but lobbyists prevented that from happening.  Our first encounter was with “Lisa Michelle”, whom was across the river, bank to bank, because it was broken down with no steering.  We were expecting this encounter since we heard “Tumbleweed” talk to them on the VHF radio earlier.  I guess “Lisa Michelle” just put in in reverse enough for us to get by it’s bow.  There was a tow “J. O. Bradford” that we hailed as “Gilbert Taylor”.  Come to find out “Gilbert Taylor” was ahead of us heading the same direction.  “Gilbert Taylor” must have been the tow that mentioned that “Lisa Michelle” was behind them, but they didn’t know what happened to it.  We mentioned to “J. O. Bradford” though that “Lisa Michelle” was broken down behind us and across the whole river.  That kind of startled the captain.  We heard their conversation later of “J. O. Bradford” helping to push “Lisa Michelle’s” stern over as they had managed to get the bow tied off to the bank.  “Thelma Parker” was the next tow we passed and gave them the same information.

This is what it looks like after you pass it standing still

After an 8 ½ hour day of travel, we dropped anchor off the side of the Tombigbee River near Pritchards Landing.  There was no one on the bank to entertain us this time as we had the fortune of just once.  It was a very peaceful and clear evening with the new moon and plenty of stars showing themselves in the clear sky.