Saturday, October 31, 2009

There was a lot of wind and rain during the night, but no bad storms. We woke to light rain and 55 degrees. At 8:30 am when we were talking about leaving, Ellie Jane motored by on her way to the Coffeeville Lock, two miles downriver. We had met John and Sharon of Ellie Jane while we were fueling up at the Columbus Marina a week ago. Gale hailed them on the marine radio and asked them to hold the lock for us. We followed them in and cleared our LAST LOCK (!) of the Loop at 9:05 am.







John and Sharon asked us where we planned to anchor for the night. Our possibilities sounded similar to theirs, so we agreed to anchor together this evening. Since they traveled faster than we did, Ellie Jane would check out the spots and let us know what they found. Later in the day, Sharon called on the radio to let us know that they had been to the anchorage at mile 52.8, the Alabama River cutoff, and found the water to be way too deep. They backtracked to Bates Lake at mile 54 and found a very satisfactory and roomy anchorage where we joined them about an hour later.

After setting the anchor, we let the dinghy down to take Lucy to shore and traveled into the narrow waters of Bates Lake to find a small community of floating houses and a trailer park along the shore. The cypress swamp looked a little spooky and we expected it would be even spookier towards sunset.





Happy Hour was aboard Ellie Jane. We got the tour of their new Grand Harbor motor yacht, built to their specifications, and were impressed by its spaciousness and liveaboard-ability. We headed back to our boat for dinner just as the sun was making a spectacular exit for the day.