Oct 14, near Jackson, AL

We left Demopolis early to join one other boat (a 25' Parker) in the Demopolis Lock (drop 40 feet) and get locked down before any commercial tows came through. There is a lot of fog on the river this morning.

Heading out on a foggy morning.

The recent rains have caused the water in the rivers to rise and begin to flood the surrounding land. The water at the Demopolis Marina has been rising four feet every 12 hours. So the river is flooding over its banks (a little) and is expected to rise more in the next few days. The rising water floats the debris that was on shore so that it moves off the shore and down the river. Kind of natures way of cleaning the riverbank. This debris makes river travel interesting as we have to avoid the debris damaging the running gear on the boat. There is talk from the lock masters that if the flooding gets worse they may close the locks because of the high water and excessive debris.

We encounter debris right away.

The waterway overflows it's banks.

Big piles of debris.

Whole trees.

Lots of birds floating downriver on logs.
A pretty sight.

The good news is that we have a 3-4 knot current with us as we travel down the Tenn-Ton Waterway. We are making 12-13 knots or about 15 mph. The river is about twenty feet above normal and flooding most of the fixed docks and some of the land areas as we pass by.




We get much further downstream than we expected. We cruise through two locks today. The first, the Demopolis, drops us 40 feet and the Coffeeville which is scheduled to drop us 34 feet but we think it only dropped us about 20 feet because the water below the dam is so high. We work our way through the debris and end up covering 120 miles.

This yacht is heading north.
We think he is going the 'wrong way'.

The dam at our final lock is in full discharge.
No wonder the water is rising downstream.

We pass a tug and barges.
He requests we pass on the 'two'.

We anchor out at Tenn-Tom mile marker 100 in a cove recommended in our cruising guide.

Our secluded anchorage out of the flowing river.

We are off the flowing river in a pretty calm water spot where there are the remains of old lock #1. On the south bank, we see a boat launch ramp and park which is now completely flooded. We are completely alone as we drop the anchor.