Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018
We arrived in Demopolis almost a week ago in the late afternoon after our anchorage at Sumpter. It had been raining most the day and continued to do so as we took on fuel and moved to our slip for the night.
The weather forecast for the next few days was rather ugly. A cold front with lots of rain was headed our way with predictions of more than 2 inches of rain. This turned out to be true. The river gage just downstream of the Demopolis Lock went from less than 34 feet when we arrived to nearly 52 feet at its peak yesterday! Needless to say, there are very few boats moving on the river. Even most of the towboats pulled over for a day or two until the river crested. We heard of a sailboat near the Sumpter Anchorage that ran aground trying to pull into the anchorage, broke off their rudder, and is now anchored waiting for someone to come tow them in for repairs.
There are currently 10-15 Looper Boats in the marina waiting for the weather to improve. We had planned to get underway after a 2-night stay but backed it up to Wednesday due to weather, then again to Thursday (today). It looks like we’ll be leaving in the morning, Friday 11/16, with 4 or 5 other boats heading out early - leaving the dock by 6AM in 30F temps! Neither of us especially enjoys the cold and Sue definitely doesn’t like early morning… but we’ll do it to get to Bobby’s (next stop, 97 miles and one lock) in one day to avoid an anchorage.
Demopolis is a nice small town, though struggling as are many on our journey. It has a motto that you may be able to figure out. Use your old vocabulary skills to determine the motto…
demo = people opolis = city Demopolis is the “City of the People”
We are glad to report that Brian received useful input from a subject matter expert regarding the sighting of bright green eyes staring back at him while shining a spotlight along the shoreline at our Sumpter anchorage. Apparently, gator eyes are reddish, (or golden). Frog eyes are white, and owls’ are yellow. The subject matter expert’s experience and research has turned up very little information on green reflective eyes in these parts. All signs point to a Chupacabra. Photographs of such are hard to come by so we have included an artist rendition with our photos.
Demopolis is the last real marina we will see for the next 230 miles until we get south of Mobile Alabama. About half-way to Mobile is a place called Bobby’s Fish Camp. It has a dock (just one dock) that is at the side of the river with fuel and space for about 3 boats to tie up. Since this is the only fuel stop between Demopolis and Mobile, nearly everyone stops at Bobby’s – either just to fuel up or stay overnight. Therefore, three tie-ups are usually not enough and any other boats have to raft up (tie up to the three tied to the dock). We’ve heard of as many as 15 boats there at one time – that would be 5 rafted at each tie up! Other than Bobby’s, any other stops we make between here and Mobile will be anchorages (which are also few and far between). With minimal phone and internet connectivity in this area (Bobby’s and anchorages), we hope to be back online in a few days.