DOWN WE GO - THE BIG DROP!!!

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19

We locked down 174’ today!!  Not all at one time, 84’ the first lock and 3 – 30’ locks thereafter.  We are on the other side of the divide and are truly on a downhill run for the Gulf of Mexico now.  We had made a plan with the other some of the boats to hit the Lock together at 7:30.  We were joined by our Canadian friends from Perfect Balance as well as the crew on Average Looper, Terri Ann and Navigator so we had 7 of us locking through together.  Going through the 84’ drop was something.  This will be the big drop or rise we have during the course of our whole trip.  Once we were down it felt like we were in a vault. 

You look up at the doors and think “I am really glad those are still closed!”  The other amazing thing about this lock is how FAST it went down. 

I have video but will have to post later when I have more bandwidth to get it uploaded.  Here was the view looking forward as we left the lock.  You can see how they carved out the canal by looking at the rocks here.  We have been seeing evidence of that all the way down the Tenn-Tom.

Besides being a big drop, the locks were only about 5 miles apart.   Lock, lock, lock…by the time we reached the 5^th lock it was after 3PM and there was a towboat coming up that we had to wait for.    Terri Ann decided to go into the Smithville Marina and we decided to just drop an anchor while the other boats continued on.   If we did not stop, there was still one more lock after this one to get through before there were any other opportunities to anchor.

We have decided that locking after 3 is a bad idea as if you get stuck at one, it could be dark before you get into a marina or anchorage.   (Talked to the other boats later and they didn’t get anchored until almost 6.  Glad we stopped when we did.)

Went into the marina by dinghy to meet the crew of Terri Ann as we had been right behind them in the locks all day but hadn’t had a chance to meet.  Al and Terri who hail from NY invited us aboard for a beer.  They are moving their boat to their 2^nd home in FL.  They were even flying a “courtesy” confederate flag – HAH!   Al’s got more guts than we do.  Not sure that would always be taken in the spirit it was intended.  A couple more Looper boats arrived and we took off to go back “home” to spend some time with Molly and get her out on deck for a while.  Before we took off Al pointed out a bumper sticker that we loved…

It was on this old disheveled houseboat.  Met the gentleman who owned (and lived on) that boat for 17 years, quite a character he was.  Life seems to be full of characters, some we meet and some we don’t!