Friday, November 13, 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Columbus Marina, Columbus MS

Hi All,

We are still in Columbus, MS, safely tied down in the Columbus Marina. We have heard some pretty crazy stories about what is happening downriver around Demopolis, Alabama, and beyond. For background, the Black Warrior River joins the Waterway around Demopolis. The Black Warrior is one of Alabama’s major rivers that extends eastward toward Birmingham. (In fact Alabama has 77,000 miles of streams that supply water to 18 river basins. Those basins result in Alabama having 1,438 miles of navigable waterways, the most of any state in the nation.) Anyway, eastern Alabama received an extreme amount of rainfall with tropical storm, Ida. The river forecast is predicting that in the Demopolis area the rivers will crest around 30 feet above normal on Sunday, November 15. We have heard of boats trying to leave the Demopolis Marina and having to turn back because they cannot get under the fixed bridges that usually have at least 52 feet of vertical clearance during normal conditions. With Demopolis being our next marina stop (after one night at anchorage), there is no place for us to go. We also heard this morning that a cruiser down by Bobby’s Fish Camp (about halfway between Demopolis and Mobile) ran into debris and took out props and shafts and maybe more because they were trying to get a diver, but no one was going to dive because of an 8 knot current. Also, Bobby’s only has 160 feet of dock and boats were rafting off one another three boats deep. (Last night, boats came into Columbus and had to raft off at the gas dock.)

So long story short we are staying here probably through the weekend with plans to start out on Monday or Tuesday. We are trying to use our time wisely and put in about 2-3 hours of boat labor a day. Today we worked on the upper drive station windshield – we need to sand and stain the teak and then install it to stabilize the windshield. However, we are being forced to relax a bit. I spend time playing and walking with Port, and Mark has finished a book. One guy in the marina said that we will all have the cleanest boats going downstream. No doubt – I washed windows today.

Columbus. Mississippi is the second largest city on the Waterway – Mobile being the largest. The city was founded in 1821. There were so many wounded soldiers, both Confederate and Union, being cared for in the city that it escaped being ravaged during the Civil War. Many of the antebellum homes still exist in the city. We were going to try to see them two days ago after running errands, but the marina courtesy car feels like a “deathtrap” so we just came back to the marina after shopping. Maybe we will try again – after all we have a few more days here.