The Travels of "Fruition": 2017 Short Cruising Season

Some homes have watch dogs. We have
Killer Blue Herons!

With all the on-going family activity, we decided to enjoy a short easy cruising season by heading back to the Tennessee River. Family matters kept us busy through most of May, and then we had to finish varnishing the teak on the sundeck before we set sail. By the end of May, we were ready to go, but then King Neptune sent day after day of thunderstorms.

At Demopolis Lock, the white egrets were
lined up along the chamber wall
like Gargoyles.

Finally on June 1 we saw a 3-day weather window (kinda), so we decided to make a run up the Tenn-Tom (Tennessee – Tombigbee River system) to see if we could get to Demopolis AL before the next round of thunderstorms came through. We departed The Wharf Marina at Orange Beach AL (which had been a nice, but expensive, place to keep the boat) in the middle of a thunderstorm & got out onto Mobile Bay where the visibility was terrible in fog & rain. We got indoctrinated quickly back into cruising, using radar & chartplotter & an occasional break in the visibility to work around the dredge in the middle of the Mobile Ship Channel. We pushed hard, sometimes running 10-11 hours/day, and made the 250 miles to Demopolis in only 3 days, surprising even us.

Tying to the floating mooring bit
inside the lock chamber. I think we're
starting to get good at this!

The night before making Demopolis, we got a real surprise when we anchored in the river, literally in the middle of nowhere, and looked across the river to the creek entrance to see another boat anchored for the night – one which we had met 8 years prior along the Tennessee River! In addition, the home port of that boat was Put-in-Bay Ohio, one of the Lake Erie Islands only 1 mile away from the home port of our boat! In fact, the owner knows my cousins on Put-in-Bay!

At Demopolis, one of the live-aboards had built
this radio-controlled sailing vessel from a kit.
When he sailed it from the dock, he had to retrieve
it using his dinghy because the wind was wrong.

After pushing hard the first half up the Tenn-Tom, we deliberately went slow the second half because the Wilson Lock on the Tennessee River was closed for maintenance until around June 20. So we went to places which we had bypassed in our previous 3 trips along the Tenn-Tom & stayed a week at a time at different marinas. We moved our car with us, so we could visit other sites in the area. After a hectic year so far, we could actually go slow & realx.