Day 367-369
This day we were making better time than we thought and came to the place I had planned for anchoring out about 1:30 PM. We both thought it was too early to stop and our next stop was only 50 miles away (about 3 hours at our cruising speed) so we decided to push on to Demopolis Yacht Basin at Demopolis, AL. One delay we had at a lock was we had to wait 15 minutes in the lock for "Andiamo", a 92 foot $10 million yacht we had last seen at Grafton Harbor, IL. The Lockmaster said Andiamo had just left the previous lock and was fast, so we would have to wait for him. When he arrived I asked him how fast he was running and he said 40 miles per hour, so I said he could leave the lock first since we only ran about one-half of that speed.
The next lock down was 15 miles away and when we got there the Lockmaster said he was in the process of locking down Andiamo and we would have to wait until he finished and another boat was locked up before we could get through. The wait would be about an hour, and then it would take a half hour to lock us through. I'm glad Andiamo thought he was so important that he could not return the favor of waiting 15 minutes for us as we had for him at the last lock, costing us an additional hour and a half of waiting time. I guess the more money you have the less polite you need to be.
Below is a picture of a floating bollard in a lock. Almost all of the locks coming down the inland rivers have these. To lock through you just pull the center of your boat up to the bollard and put one line around it. As the water goes up or down in the lock the bollard floats up and down with it, making it very easy to keep your boat in place during locking. You only need to stand by with a sharp knife in case the bollard should stick in its chamber and you would then need to quickly cut the line to free the boat. It never happened to us, but we have heard of it happening on occasion. Sharon was the keeper of the knife and always stood by with her knife at the ready to cut the line if need be.
On the way down the river to Demopolis, we came upon these spectacular white cliffs that extended on and off for several miles. We later learned that they were chalk cliffs and were deposited at about the same geological time as the famous White Cliffs of Dover in England.
Demopolis was the first time we had a covered slip during this trip. It was nice being in out of the sun and rain!
I was not only the keeper of the knife, but I was the mate in charge of letting down the fenders, looping the line to the bollard, and cleating it back to Building Our Wings. I can now secure the fenders with the correct knot and cleat the lines to secure the boat.
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