Down the Tenn-Tom with Company

Down the Tenn-Tom with Company

With the Grand Harbor courtesy car, we met Rob and Sue Blue in Fulton, MS and brought them back to Erben Renewal for a couple days of cruising. The Blues drove up from our home port of Panama City and came loaded with yummy treats. Although we are now heading south, we are still not close enough to the gulf for easy access to fresh seafood. Sue’s shrimp jambalaya and crab West Indian salad provided the perfect taste of home. As a bonus they also brought us mail including some current magazines! On a foggy morning we started down the Tenn-Tom. This is the newest man-made waterway and offers a short cut of more than 700 miles on a trip from Chattanooga to Pensacola.  (Technically this waterway is divided into two parts and two chart books.  The first connects the Tombigbee to the Tennessee and the second the Tombigbee to the Black Warrior and out into Mobile Bay. – Informally it is all referred to as the Tenn-Tom.) Our guide book reports that more dirt was moved in the 1980s to build this waterway than in the construction of the Panama Canal, but it remains unknown to most Americans – including us before we started planning for this trip. Our first day out, we traversed the ditch which was cut to connect the Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River.  The boring levee and straight stretches were hardly noticed as we caught up on almost a year of family and hometown news. When the canal opened up into Bay Springs Lake, we found a peaceful and secluded anchorage for the night.  There were supposed to be eagles living nearby but we didn’t see any – maybe it was the clouds, fog and rain that drove them away?  In the morning we pulled the anchor – with Rob doing the anchor washing gymnastics, and headed to the first of three locks.  The Whitten Lock is the largest on the Tenn-Tom at 84 feet.  Then we were on to two more locks where our luck and timing held up.  The tow coming out of the last lock exited a few minutes after we arrived so we and three other boats locked down before the tow waiting to lock up.  Commercial traffic has priority over pleasure craft like us - missing this kind of perfect timing can cause hours of delay.  We didn’t even mind the rain and wind – much.  The dock master hauled us on to the dock as the last of the rain and wind squalls tossed us around. With great sadness we said good bye to the Blues who faced a long drive back to Panama City while we were able to enjoy a cable hookup and some NFL football :) Although their visit did not include perfect weather, it was perfectly wonderful to see such good friends – even if they had not come laden with bounty. We hope to see them onboard again before too long.

 

 Local artisan on the way back to Grand Harbor