Life On Orion

 After 3 nights across the river, we moved over here and will stay here 6 nights, then leave the boat for 2 months over the holidays and drive back to WI for Thanksgiving.  The boat will be pulled from the water, have the hull inspected, generator repaired, windlass anchor motor repaired and the whole boat washed and waxed. When we come back the 2nd week of January, it should all be good to go for the last 4th of the loop. The restaurant here is great and the seafood is awesome.  We have eaten there about 3 times during our stay and have gotten to know the folks who work there pretty well.  This is a family run operation and they couldn’t be nicer or more caring about their boating customers. We continued to share happy hours and occasional dinners with Steve and Kathy and when we each go our separate ways, it will be tough for all of us. No courtesy car here, and no rental cars available, to Tom got resourceful and we rented a U-Haul pickup for a couple of days. Four adults piled into

 There are 3 marinas close together on one section of the Dog River off Mobile Bay and to say that they are marinas in the traditional sense of the word would be misleading.  They are working boatyards with a length of old wooden fixed dock where you can tie up with minimal amenities.  We had reservations at Dog River for 3 nights and they had boats crammed into every possible nook and cranny.  We were in a slip just beyond the fuel dock and had to climb a rickety wooden ladder built into the dock to exit the boat.  There are tides here now, so we could only get Madison off the boat during high tide when the boat was high enough on the dock for her to jump on and off. Yay for having electricity! We ran into friends that we had met a few stops ago and they offered to transport us across the river to the Grand Mariner marina where there was a great restaurant.  We did the dingy shuffle and Steve and Kathy joined us for a wonderful seafood dinner.  I slept like a baby not having to worry

 Well, I spoke too soon and we actually spent several days without cell service - not even to make a call.  So, to sum it up, we anchored out for 3 more nights on the Tom-Bigbee River and the last spot was the prettiest since it was off the main river on the Tensaw River cutoff.  There were 10 or more boats anchored in there that night so we were lined up like a string of pearls down the river and around the bend.  We were almost the last 2 boats to leave in the morning and I was very excited because we were heading to Mobile and would be tied up in a marina! Anchoring and the river life has been interesting, peaceful, stressful and beautiful all at the same time.  We have loved our joint dinners with Steve and Kathy and traveling with them, but I have to say I’m ready to be off the rivers and on to another phase of the loop.

 We had an early start to our day and by that I mean we left our slip in the marina just before 6 am and sunrise isn’t until 7 am.  The Demopolis lock was scheduled to close today at 8 am for repairs and we needed to get through it before then, so the 9 boats leaving the marina coordinated with the lock master for a 6:30 am lock through. We have navigation lights and a spotlight up on the bow, but nothing prepares you for leaving a marina and traveling 15 minutes down river in the pitch black….  I never want to do it again and I was not a fan! We literally could see nothing, so Tom navigated according to his charts and I was out on the bow looking for anything we might run into.  Yuk! We made it into the lock without incident and the sun came up as we were making our 30 ft. drop. Only one more lock to go on this river odessy and I am so relieved. This section of the Tombigbee river is very windy and narrow in a lot of spots with shoaling on each bank, so driving the boat down the river

 We arrived at Kingfisher Marina about 1 pm yesterday and we were one of 8 boats coming into the marina that day. The scenery on our boat trip down here was beautiful and the most exciting for me was going by the famous white cliffs of Epps. Our friends, Kathy and Steve took photos of Orion going by the cliffs and they turned out so well! The only frustrating thing the past couple of days is the lack of cell service.  Verizon doesn’t function well here and we have been unable to communicate with family and friends or access any internet.  Truly wilderness boating…. The other big news for me is that when we pulled into our slip I discovered that we were docked opposite the Here’s To Us with Sam and Rev Crouse on board.  We have been watching their “What Yacht To Do” videos and reading their loop blogs for over a year and they pretty much lived in our living room for all that time.  They are the couple that made us feel that we could actually do this crazy thing and their videos were so

 We are anchored for our 2nd night in a row since leaving the marina at Columbus and I have to say, it’s not as scary as it was in the beginning. Last night it was just the 2 boats rafted together in a small side channel of the river and it was quiet and uneventful. Today we had a beautiful cruise down the river and went through 2 locks. Right after the 2nd lock, where we locked through with a total of 8 boats, we turned into a side channel and went back several hundred feet and anchored in the middle of the water in the most idyllic setting.  After seeing us turn into the anchorage 3 other boats followed us in and anchored near us. We had met one of the couples but not the others, so Tom invited everyone to our boat for docktails. They arrived via dinghy and tied up at our stern and we had our little social hour up on the flying bridge. It was a fun time and then we all retired to our boats only illuminated by our anchor lights.  Madison is getting used to her dingy rides to go potty