Demopolis to Bobby's Fish Camp

Whew... what a whirl wind trip back to Somerville to attend to some business and finally returning to the boat on Monday afternoon.

The trip to Somerville was pleasant enough, however the weather was terrible. There were heavy thunderstorms producing a Flash Flood Warning for the Demopolis area when we left. Great... we leave our boat in a flood!

When I realized I needed to get back to Somerville from Demopolis, I was confronted with a perplexing transportation problem. Of course there isn't any airline service from the metropolis of Demopolis nor are there rental cars available for hire. So... I called the ol' standby. ENTERPRISE!!! There was an office in Meridian (52 miles away) and they offered to have a car dropped at the marina for me and when I returned... just call them and they would pick it up. I was concerned about the additional charge but when they quoted me a $15 upcharge each way.... I was all over it!!! This agency continues to outperform all of my expectations. I will continue to make them my number one choice as I need transportation.

The evening we left, there was a Flash Flood Warning for the Demopolis area and I wasn't sure what we would find when we returned. The boat came through the flood just fine, but it did create havoc for us as we began our trip anew. The water on the Tombigbee was "smoke'n".... and trash was everywhere.

While we were at Demopolis a commercial tug boat pulled in to refuel. They had "parked" their load up river and just the tug itself was at the dock. Well,... being the curious type, I walked over and struck up a conversation with the deckhands. They both had been doing the job for about 6 years and really loved it. They would work 21 days on and 10 days off. While on the boat, they would work in 6 hour shifts (6 on followed by 6 off).

While talking with the deckhands, the Captain came by and offered a tour of the boat. The engines on those tugs are enormous!!! Just the generators where the size of the engines on large cruising style trawlers. The pilot house was quite large and had all the fancy gadgets that was needed to travel the inland waterways. What it DIDN'T HAVE was a "steering wheel". It had a basic tiller style handle that controlled the directional movement of each rudder. Of course, I played a "thousand questions" and walked away immensely impressed with their job. The Captain was extremely nice and answered all of my silly questions. He himself is a third generation river captain and truly enjoys the job.

Since the water level was up, that translated into a higher speed for us. There were times we were traveling over 12 miles per hour. Now, that doesn't seem like a fast speed, but remember our normal cruise speed is only 9.2 miles per hour.

Because of the higher speed, we were able to make it to Bobby's Fish camp for the overnight which was almost a hundred river miles from Demopolis.

Bobby's Fish camp is basically a small pier along side the river. We were the only ones there that evening and had the dock to ourselves. I tied several lines to the bow from the pier itself since we were alongside the fast moving river. Kris may have thought I was practicing overkill, but the last thing I wanted to do is wake up pinned against some river bank.