Good Morning, Loopers, Cruisers, and Fogsters!!  Another foggy day greats us this morning.  We expected it.  However, we thought we would be able to get an earlier start to our day in spite of the expected fog.  You know, the weatherman isn’t always right.  In this case, he was.  We are planning a 60 mile today plus one lock.  We figure we should be able to do this rather easily since we only have a mild current running against us.  The Pickwick Lock is at the end of the day.

Leaving Clifton Marina as the fog was lifting

Or so we thought.  As soon as we were in the river, the fog was thick as … well, thick as fog can be.  We had the radar on.  We chimed our fog horn every few minutes.  Wayne could see something approaching us via the AIS signal but we couldn’t visually see it.  I am standing on the bow keeping an eye out.  THEN out of the fog came the barge!!  We hurriedly moved out of the way.  Oh my goodness!!  They missed us by feet!!

Leaving the entrance to Clifton Marina

FOG!! – can you hear the strange noises in the distance? Scary movie time.

Magically, at 8:30am, the fog lifted.  We don’t know why at exactly 8:30am, but it did.  Yea!!

Blue skies ahead as the fog was lifting

We now can see the houses along the river bank.  Tree houses.  Houses on stilts.

The second barge of the day is going downstream with a small load.  No wakes for us.

This barge looks full!! Too full for the grey tops to pull over it. Full of ??

We always wonder what exactly is being barged up / down the river.  Oil, chemicals, mulch?  Sand, gravel, and what-nots.

Didn’t this day turn out beautiful!?!  I just had to share!

We heard a tow pushing 16 empty barges was on his way down river.  Watch out!!  They looked empty and riding high on the water.  I thought the little “go-fast” boat would help with a sense of size for these barges.  We passed each other as if we were strangers in the night.  He stayed on his side of the channel.  We stayed on ours.  I waved just in case they were watching.

We were so excited that we were finally close to the Pickwick Lock.  At 2pm and we figured we would be at our marina for the night in no time at all!  Yippee!!

Slowly approaching Pickwick Lock

However, that is not how it turned out.  There were 9 Pleasure Crafts bunching up near the entrance to the Pickwick Lock.  They have their large chamber down and were only using the small chamber.  Egads.  There is a tow in the process of locking through up and down so we will have to wait for a bit.  A current saying we have heard a bunch lately:  When the Lock Master says 30 min. he means an hour.  If he says an hour, he really means 2hours.  We were told it’ll be about an hour. ( imagine southern accent on the hour.)  We ended up waiting over 3 hours… ‘ours’…

The Lock master asked us to lock through rafting to one another.  The three largest boats would tie off to the 3 floating bollards.  Then 2 each would raft off the largest boat.  3 by 3. It took awhile to get us all organized and rafted together.  Going Up 55 feet!  From start to finish getting all 9 boats in and out took almost an ‘our’ itself.

3 rows of 3 boats attached to 3 floating bollards

My single line holding 3 Pleasure Crafts – glad we have really good thick lines on these occasions.

I have to admit that having 3 boats on my line was a bit stressful.  3 boats!!!  I did NOT leave my line unattended at all.  I was so nervous.  Those other 2 boats and their faith that I did everything correctly to tie our Always Home to the bollard perfectly to begin with.  Then they rafted to us.  Stress!!  Is it 5 o’clock yet?  anywhere?

The Pickwick Lock door slowly closing behind us.

The Pickwick lock is constructed of steel and concrete.  Pebbles are exposed and really present a nice image.  Especially when you are almost nose to nose with the wall.  The pebbles also hide the slime.  I couldn’t see any!  No critters this afternoon.  No plants growing in the cracks.  Really clean.

Finally leaving Pickwick Lock as the afternoon wanes

Pickwick Lake is gorgeous.  The houses on the mountain side overlooking the lake are gorgeous as well.  They must have million dollar views!

After leaving the lock, the 9 boats peeled off into different directions.

Boats going in different directions – or X marks the spot!

A few went into the Pickwick State Park Marina, a few off to anchoring locations, and the rest to the same marina we were going.  The Grand Harbor Marina, Counce, TN.  The dock master was gone for the day by the time we 4 boats arrived.  The security guard and the help of fellow boaters helped us all dock safely at 6pm.  Wow, what a long day!

Sunset on Pickwick Lake at the Grand Harbor Marina