DAY 40 - November 10, 2023

Today was a challenging day. We were among those boats leaving Joe Wheeler State Park and resuming our travels on America's Great Loop. This involved passing through two locks. In the past I've usually gone through locks by myself or sometimes with another boat. Today was going to be a new experience because there were twelve boats in our flotilla and we would all be in the lock at the same time.

The two locks we were going through are busy with commercial traffic during the day, so we had to be ready to lock at daybreak. We got up at 5:00 and our flotilla captain contacted everyone by VHF radio at 5:20. We left the marina in the dark and rain with limited visibility, arriving at the lock by 6:00. Since we were in the smallest boat, we were to enter last. We ended up "rafting" to another boat. This was the first time we rafted (tied up to a boat that's already secured to the wall). 

 

Denise can be seen looking between our boat and the one we rafted to.

After we were lowered in the lock chamber to the next pool level, we exited and headed for the next lock as a flotilla. The picture above is a screen shot of the boats we traveled with that use NEBO. All of the boats have a flag next to them with the AGLCA logo (AGLCA is the organization we met with over the past week). The blue boat on the right is us. To everyone else using NEBO, our icon looks like the rest of them.

Along the way to the next lock we saw the best fall color leaves we've seen on this trip. The drought conditions have prevented the leaves from being as pretty as otherwise expected this time of year.

We received a call on the radio that there would be a four hour delay in entering the next lock, so everyone  pulled back their boats to idle. After that call we received another one indicating a second flotilla would be locking through with us. And......later still we found out there would be about ten bass boats from a fishing tournament also joining us.

Once again we had to raft to a larger boat already against the lock wall. Then another boat rafted to us. In the picture above you can see boats tied up on both side of us.

These are boats rafted behind us. The last boat on the right side is a huge catamaran called Beluga. After completing the great loop, they plan to have their sailing mast reinstalled and will be crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

This picture shows the boats rafted together in front of us, including the bass boats.

The boat next to us had a dog. At one point the dog jumped from its boat, onto the deck of our boat.

This is a photo the lock master took of all the boats in the lock.

This is a photo the lock master took from the other end of the lock. You can barely see us squished between two larger boats. All together there were 22 trawler boats and 10 bass boats, for a total of 32 boats in the lock at one time.

This is our flotilla after leaving the lock. We joined four other boats and travel about 42 total miles for the day to an anchorage known as The Rock Pile. We entered the anchorage in total darkness and all five boats rafted together. Then we walked across several boats to the flybridge of one of the larger boats. Once there we had a total of twelve people having "docktails" and snacks before returning to our own boats for dinner.