Integrity Cruise

Day 204: Grand Harbor to Bay Springs, MS

Home

The Adventure

The Boat

About Us

Contact Us

Day 204: Friday, November 16th: It was very cold this morning as we prepared to get underway. Ruth got a few pictures. Here is Integrity after the storm in the early morning light, as Bill got ready on the bridge:

This is Wings, our friends' boat moored next to us; it's a Nordhavn 35:

And on our other side was Miss Happ, whom we have been leapfrogging for months:

Neither crew of these boats were awake yet.

As we got underway around 7:00am to run down the famed "Tenn-Tom," we had this intriguing view. What lay ahead? We were excited as we had our second cup of coffee. COLD, remember?

We hurried to make it to Whitten Lock - about 38 miles downstream. We wanted to go through three locks and stop at Midway Marina for the night -- that was about 56 miles total plus the locks. VERY ambitious in this land of many tows!

While we were still in the river pool of the Tennessee River, we noted the water was down about four feet. This picture shows several things; first, note the grayish line above the water. That's the normal level of water. Second, notice how last night's storm blew all the leaves off the hardwoods (a few days ago, they were pretty colors). Third, note the evergreen trees hold forth for the winter:

A few miles farther, and we were into the "Divide Cut." This is a section that was excavated when the Ten-Tom was built. It's 24 miles long, narrow and not so pretty. When you meet a tow you have to negotiate around him. This is the scene as you meet:

To protect the "Cut" from creeks rushing in (remember, this cut is below normal terrain), they built baffles to permit the creek water to flow in but to keep trash and silt out. The result is very interesting:

A little farther downstream we saw the lone sign marking where the town of Holcut used to be. Holcut is the only town that had to be moved in order to dig the Cut. We would like to have known more about this seemingly sad event:

We soon came to the first lock on the Tenn-Tom, named Whitten Lock, just below Bay Springs Lake. Sadly, they were waiting for a tow to lock up bound (we are down bound). We waited above the dam about two and a half hours and realized we could not make our destination. Bummer!

So we diverted a short distance to Bay Springs Marina for the night, aborting most of the day's trip. This was a pretty nice spot to get diverted to. Happily, our friends Catnip Too and Pelican came into the marina right behind us. We were glad to spend the night with them.

Lows tonight are predicted to be in the mid-twenties. B-r-r-r-r-r!

Position tonight: N34 32.435 W088 20.571

To return to our Main Page simply

close this window.