On Day 7 Sunday November 14 2021 we stayed at the Midway Marina and ran errands for supplies and washed our clothes and cleaned the boat. Had a few small things to take care of on the boat and enjoyed running errands with Barry and Andrea.

Now to day 8! Today we went through three locks, the Fulton lock, the Wilkins lock and the Amory lock. The locks at this point are around 30-40 feet and are built the same. Captain Steve and I have perfected the lock pin tie on and can rest easy with the boat safely tied up. I keep and eye on the lines to make sure they stay tight and read all the stickers and written comments on the pin. Some of the pins have vegetation growing on them and others just have stray sticks and water trash sitting on the back part of the pin mechanism. There are two wheels one on either side of the ping mechanism.( I hope i have a picture for you so you can see what i mean). The wheels run in a steel cutout built into the walls on either side of the pin into the wall. At one of the locks one of those wheels got stuck for a minute then dropped, wow i could just see it stuck and my boat hanging on the side of the wall like a lizard hanging onto the side of a tree! After that we ran a few miles toward darkness and (of course) anchored out successfully in an anchorage with a demasted sailboat called the “black swan”. It is a gorgeous sailboat headed for Mobile and Turner Marine to have the mast put back on the boat and the rigging put back in place. We woke up to our boat floating away from the anchor and oh boy “chinese fire drill” to reset the anchor. Ran out on deck to watch anchor pull up and count out the feet until we had it set in the right spot again! We were back in this channel off the main channel and it had a rocky bottom and our anchor scraped along the rocks like fingernails down a chalkboard. Finally we found a muddy place to anchor and we could finally rest, or so we thought. The current was strong at times during the night and we had to be very vigilant to make sure anchor stayed in place! The Black Swan was having anchor issues to so it was both of us out on deck running and dropping anchors until we were good. Stayed in place until morning after last fir drill about 12AM. I was reading about that anchorage and trying to find out why it was so hard to keep and anchor there. BOOM found out it was the spillway from the Amory lock and dam. Mile Marker 366.3 is this anchorage and i do not recommend it unless you anchor out at the mouth of it close to the entrance on the starboard side. Our boat buddies did not have an issue at this spot.

Captains Log: Make sure you put out plenty of chain in this anchorage (366.3mm).Anchor out close to entrance after entering in on the starboard side.