Days 169 - 170

Cooks Bend Anchorage, AL - Kingfisher Bay Marina Demopolis, AL

• Start 6:50 AM
• End 2:20 PM
• Underway 7:00 Hours
• Distance 52 miles
• Total Miles on Trip 3486
• Av Speed 7.3 knots
• Locks 1
• Weather Sunny , 55 Degrees, Wind 10 Knts NW

Another long day on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. The scenery is the same, but we did have a couple of must see sights along the way. The first was a phone booth on the bank of the river. Every looper takes a picture of this phone booth. It is literally in the middle of nowhere. When I tried to research why it is there, I only find comments from other loopers.

The second is the white limestone cliffs of XXXXXX Alabama. They are incredible. It is surprising how little development there is along the riverbanks. There are a couple of sections with some hose or camps but then we travel 20 miles with nothing but riverbanks and trees.

While we were traveling we looked into Demopolis Yacht Basin, the marina that we thought we had reservations for and found out that it closed last year and has not reopened. Mark & Karen (Kay Dee) thought they had called but they called about 10 places the day they made the reservations. It is also possible they called and were misled. Angel called on our way there and asked about the price of diesel fuel, and they said they did not have any. We are not sure why they just did not say they were out of business.

Once we realized we did not have slips for the night both Karen and Angel reached out to Kingfisher Bay Marina, to get a slip for two nights. We had to do this by text, because there is little to no cell service in this section of the river. We were told that for the Saturday night, there would be room for one boat on their fuel dock, and we could raft off each other. Sunday night they had slips for both of us. We were very thankful to have a slip. Because of the large number of loopers, and limited number of transient slips they are limiting transient boats to, two night maximum. (Trust me two nights is more than enough in Demopolis.)

Kingfisher Bay does have a courtesy car and you are limited to two hours, and you have to sign up to get it. The only time that we could get it was Sunday night at 6pm. Anna Maria is the dockmaster at Kingfisher and she can be a character to deal with. Even the boaters that have permanent slips and long term slips there find her hard to deal with. When you use the loaner car you must put exactly $1.50 worth of gas in the car, and bring her the receipt. You must also go to the gas station she tells you to go to and call her from the gas station on your way back to the marina. WEIRD!!! She also has dozens of notes in the boaters lounge telling you what you can and can't do.

Every night at 4pm they have a Captain's meeting to prepare for the next day's departure. The Demopolis lock is 2 miles downstream, and Anna Marie has several notes on how the "lockmaster" wants the looper's to handle our departure. According to her, only one boat is to contact the lock and make sure there is no commercial traffic, The person calling must have a list of all of the boats with travel speeds, all of the boats must arrive together, and the faster boats must enter the lock first. This was also passed on by looper's that went to the meeting the night before. I was elected to be the lead and call the lockmaster at 5:45am.

Tomorrow we are off to the Demopolis Dam, then to anchor 50 miles downstream.