Monday Oct. 21 

0 miles 

Today turned out to be catch up with old friend’s day. Bill and Mary Russell aboard Harbor Reach pulled into the marina and Jim and Sharon Angel who are driving south from Michigan stopped to see us. The Russell’s and Angel’s know each other also so we spent the afternoon and evening catching up.

 

Tuesday Oct. 22 

38 miles  Grand Harbor to Bay Springs, MS

We pulled out of the marina at 0930 to a cloudy cool day. The highs for today were 66 degrees. It is time to get farther south and warmer weather. This next section of water we traveled on today is called the Tenn-Tom waterway. This is a 24 mile long man made channel (called the Divide Cut) connecting the Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River. It averages 280 feet wide and 14-17 feet deep.

Between the marina and the Divide Cut.

 

Tenn-Tom Divide Cut

Along the Divide there are several concrete levees built to control the runoff from nearby creeks. If there had been a heavy rain inland they would resemble a huge waterfall.

 

During construction of the Divide, Holcut was the only town in the path of the Tenn-Tom waterway project. Located high on the bank a Memorial was built in remembrance.

 

 At 1330 we pulled into a small cove to anchor for the night. Near the cove is a Visitor center that over looks the lock that we will be going thru tomorrow. We toured the center than took a walk to get some pictures of the lock.

 

This is the downstream side 85 feet lower.

Our anchorage for the night.

 

Wednesday Oct. 23

 54 miles   Bay Springs to Aberdeen, MS

We left our anchorage at 0900 and headed to the first of 6 locks that we went through today. This lock dropped us 85 feet and there were 4 other “Looper” boats in with us.

In the lock upstream.

 

 In the lock after dropping 85 feet.

 

The farthest distance between 2 locks was 14 miles so all 5 boats traveled together and went through all the locks. This section of the waterway is called the Chain of Lakes and is still part of the Tenn-Tom. For the most part it is very narrow and pretty straight. Each of the locks and dams made a small lake and the sections between them are a lot of man made cuts. A lot of this land was forests and when the Tenn-Tom was built they only cut down the trees in the channel area. Traveling along this route you make sure you stay in side the channel because there are a lot of stumps just outside.

 

 

 

 

At the second lock of the day we had to wait for 20 minutes for a tow to come through so all 5 boats just idled about a half mile from the lock. It was a very narrow section and we didn’t realize that we had drifted out of the channel till we bumped the bottom and started to churn up mud. Thank goodness there were no stumps in this area.

 

At 1745 we pulled into Aberdeen Marina and got a slip for the night. The following pictures were of the “channel” we used to get to the marina. Tomorrow I will post some pictures of the marina.

Can you follow the red and green buoys? 

 

 Are you sure this leads to a marina?