Barges Barges and More Barges

The Captain called the lock this morning and found out we had a wait of about 30 minutes before the Lock Master could “turn around” the water after locking another boat down.  We left the dock about 8a and saw another boat out in the channel also waiting to lock down along with a sailboat.

We were waiting under cloudy skies... where had our sunshine gone?!

Green light on the lock wall signaled us to proceed into the Lock... we passed the Snagboat that we didn't get to see yesterday due to closure for repairs.

Here we are leaving the lock with the sailboat just ahead of us.  He was traveling with another boat that was behind us in the Lock.

Both these boats decided they were going to travel slow today so we passed them and ran into our first tow of the day.

We passed more tows today than we did on the MS River or the TN River! With the sun so bright and in our eyes it was not always easy to see them as they came around the bends in the Tenn-Tom Waterway.  I can remember being afraid of doing just this before we left on the trip but the tug boat captains have been so nice and easy to work with even if we don't always understand what they are saying...at least we understand them when they   say, “one whistle” meaning port side passage or “Two whistle” for a starboard pass!

I have only a few photos of the tows... as the sun made it impossible to take good pictures...yeah, are you thinking we should be going south so the sun should not be in front of us?..... Today the river wound around and we were going East most of the morning.

This one came so fast (empty) and close I could not photograph the whole tow!

Last tow of the day.

Mostly the banks of the waterway were forested but just before our anchorage we began to see some houses and nice yards along the port side.

The Waterway became covered in these water Hyacinths floating on top of the water with a considerable amount of dirt attached to their roots... certainly not as much trouble as weeds attached to the bottom..... you sure don't want to anchor in those kind of weeds!  However, we had to keep a close eye on the hyacinths  because they often had sticks and logs entangled in them that we needed to avoid.

We stopped early at 1p today as there is no other place to anchor before Demopolis which is another 50 miles. We are in a peaceful anchorage near a park......we can see one camper with a tent on the other side of this little inlet.  Another boat (Gold Loopers..meaning they have completed the Loop) has just anchored across from us. The breeze is blowing us gently around.....it will be a wonderful night on the "hook".