We left Demopolis in the pre-dawn drizzle to travel the 3 miles to the Demopolis Lock (down 40 feet). The forecast said it would be a rainy cold terrible day - and it was. Torrential rain on and off all day.

Demopolis Lock in the early morning rain.

We figured we'd travel the hundred or so miles to Bobby's Fish Camp - the only place to tie up without anchoring out on the river (see previous entry) and stay overnight there before finishing the voyage to Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico. By the time we arrived at Bobby's, we'd traveled 97 miles and it was only 10:30 am. Bobby's was closed that day - so no fish dinner awaited us and we were expecting a half dozen slower boats to arrive and tie or raft up at the small restaurant dock. We decided, providently or not, to push on.

Bobby's Fish Came, Silas, AL; Coffeeville Lock.

We continued to the Coffeeville Lock where we had a short wait, and continued down the Tombigbee River 73 more miles to the confluence with the Alabama River, and then 6 miles after that the junction with the Tensaw River, whereupon we found ourselves in the Mobile River. All this time, we were plowing forward in heavily falling rain, rain seeping in steadily through the isinglass zippers - and we had to wring out the absorbent cloths underneath the panels every few minutes to keep up with the flow of rain.

After a further 40 miles we were in the thick of the Mobile Harbor traffic and the enormous container vessels and tows and barges, subject to its no wake zones, as the rain poured down, and the skies darkened. It was past 3pm and it looked as if it were dusk already - the real Central Time sunset is just a 5pm - so we had to make tracks to get to the Dog River, where we'd booked our stay.

Mobile Alabama from the water.

Finally after clearing the busy Mobile Harbor, we found ourselves in the open Mobile Bay - you could smell the brackish water - the first time Salty had a taste of salt water since the Hudson River. Going south on the shipping channel, we barely found the channel for Dog River as we were quickly losing light. Going up the channel and under the Dog River Bridge, we turned into the Dog River Marina as the lights were coming on. Unfortunately, the guy at the gas dock didn't get the message we were coming, now that it was after closing hours, but he found us a place to stay for the night.

We are planning to use the Dog River Marina as a base to explore Natchez, MS and New Orleans, LA through Thanksgiving Week. During that time, we are hoping to take care of some further maintenance and fluid changes on the Cummins engines and the Mercury Zeus pod-drives. As we settled down, we found that touring in the deluge all day had revealed another problem - a leak in the cabin in the forward stateroom - which meant another repair job! It appeared as if all the caulking on the window on the foredeck had broken down and was allowing water to pool and flow into the interior. Nonetheless, we were a bit shocked that we had clocked 231 miles in 11 hours - and nearly ended up in the dark as we were arriving. An excuse to get a good night's sleep and deal with all the maintenance and repair issues in the morning.