Day  Eight – Monday - Bay Springs to Smithville  

Halloween decorations in Bay Springs Marina

Sun-up and AURORA prepares to leave Bay Springs

            Locks, locks, locks.  For the next few days Brett and I will have much opportunity to practice our locking-through techniques with four on tap for today.  First will be Whitten Lock, followed by Montgomery Lock, Rankin Lock and finally, Fulton Lock.  Whitten, the first, is just a mile from our Bay Springs dock and after contacting the lockmaster and letting him know we are 15 minutes out, our mid-western twang must have alerted him to our orgins because his reply comes back with a smile we could hear even if we could not see it.  “Y’all come on in… we’ll be a-waitin’ for y’all.”  GLASS SLIPPER and AURORA share the lock with one other boat, James preferring to tie up on his port side while Brett and I prefer our starboard side tie.  As I maneuver AURORA close to the floating bollard and use reverse to stop the boat, Brett is standing right at midships with the line from our stern, takes two wraps on the bollard moves a few feet forward and efficiently secures the end of the line to that infamous forward cleat.  We are now secure both fore and aft in moments. It is amazingly quick when one has the proper length of line and a little hard earned knowledge from our Pickwick disaster. The lockmaster will not begin the water transfer until all boats in the lock have radioed him that they are secured to the wall so James and I report in as does the third boat. 

 

GLASS SLIPPER  port tied to wall

We drop 35 feet while the doors hold back the lake

Doors open and we exit Whitton Lock

Brett and I give each other the thumbs up sign as the water drains out of the lock and we rapidly go down with the receding water. That thumbs up signal brings back a humorous memory for me even if it was at the time, less so for Kristine.  We were driving the Dalmatian Coast Road in what was Yugoslavia at the time and decided to take the “road to Setenj.”  One guide book described it as scenic while another warned it was “adventurous.”  That was the draw for me because I love mountain roads.  Kris… not so much.  In fact she stashes pounds of chocolate in the glove compartment for the express use on RK’s forays on switchback, single lane scary roads.  This particular road climbs up the side of the mountain range and has no less than a dozen sharp switchbacks, none of which have shoulders or guardrails.  Kris’s knuckles are white as she clings to the door handle while stuffing large chunks of chocolate into her mouth.  Her logic is unassailable.  As she puts it, “If I am going to die on this road, I want to gobble as much chocolate as I can because it will never get to my thighs!”  The first few switchbacks go uneventfully but as I make the blind turn midway up the mountain, YIKES, directly a few yards in front of me is a huge tour bus taking up the entire road!  There is an old sailor proverb that says regardless of who has the legal right of way, tonnage rights will prevail.  And this tour bus has tonnage rights over our little rented Fiat.  I turn my head and begin backing down the road about a quarter of a mile until I find a small indentation in the face of the mountain where I can squeeze up against the rock face.  Kris is nearly apoplectic as chocolate disappears into her mouth by the handful.  As the bus slowly but carefully skirts the edge of the road to pass by us, the driver looks at me, gives me a great big smile and then holds up his hand with the thumbs up signal.  I smile at him and return the universal signal.  Kris breathes a huge sigh of relief as we resume our climb up the mountain side.  When we reach the next blind turn on the switchback, there is another tour bus right in front of me.  I repeat the nerve wracking backing-up to the very same indentation in the rock face as her chocolate supply rapidly disappears.  In this country, thumbs up is not the universal sign I had thought it to be… it is how one says, “There is one more bus behind me!”  Kris and I laugh about it now but she was not laughing at the time. 

Back on the Tombigbee, with GLASS SLIPPER repaired, we have the locks pretty much to ourselves today and make good time through the series of drops but decide to stop at Smithville for the night.  It is a tiny marina with one long pier that both of us tie up to and we follow the elderly gentleman up to the office to settle our overnight fees. In an effort to be polite I motion for James to go first with his credit card while I wait until he is finished.  The elderly man helping us is not the owner but simply a resident on the dock who helps out when needed.  Unfortunately, he punches in James’s $33 dollar fee as $333 dollars.  About 40 minutes later after James has talked to the credit card company and corrected the error, I sheepishly ask him to run my credit card as well.  The elderly gentleman is happy to let us do our own punching in of the numbers. James laughs at the snafu and says next time I can go first.  

 

Some boats are more tired than others