Demopolis, AL to Silas, AL (Bobby’s Fish Camp)

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December 15, 2022: We surf the leading edge of floodwaters and get a lot farther than I expected to.

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(continued from Gainesville, AL (Tombigbee Oxbow Anchorage) to Demopolis, MS)

It rained on and off during the night. I know this because when it was raining the sound was loud on the metal roof over our covered slip.

Morning Routine Includes an Unexpected Swim

It was still dark, of course. I wake up very early and, in the winter months, it’s aways dark when I get up. If we were going to leave that morning, we were going to leave early so I had to get my dog chores done. I decided to take my pups out for their first walk right away and did what I usually do at a marina: put them on the dock to give them a head start and follow with their leashes.

Everything was fine until we got to the part of the floating dock with the laundry and bathrooms. That’s when Rosie Barker caught sight of another dog coming down an intersecting dock and did what she does: bark. While my attention was on her, trying to get her to quiet down and put a leash on her, Lily took a look over the edge of the dock, saw a soft bed of weeds, and jumped down onto it.

Trouble was, they were floating weeds.

She passed right through them, sunk a bit, and came up to the surface looking completely shocked. By that time, I was at the edge of the dock looking down at her. I called her and she started swimming away from me.

I don’t know what was going through her little brain. Maybe she figured that she wouldn’t be able to jump back onto the dock and was looking for shore. But there was no shore. The dock was floating in a basin surrounded by corrugated metal sheets. She was swimming toward one of those.

I called and called but she kept going. Then she went under again. When she popped back up, she seemed to notice me and changed direction. Just in time, I should add. I was starting to think I’d have to go in after her.

I lay down on the wet dock and reached out to her. She swam to me and I grabbed her. I rolled over onto my back, holding her very wet, very cold body against my nightshirt. I may as well have gone in. I was almost just as wet.

I snapped leashes on the two dogs and walked them off the dock. I got them to do their business — poor Lily was shivering wildly the whole time — and walked them back to the boat where I had a towel for Lily and dry clothes for me.

Early Start

The one thing I’d noted when I was out with my pups was that the water wasn’t over the edge of the basin as Captain Steve said it would be. In fact, it only looked maybe a foot higher than it had been the night before.

I talked to Spencer in Chasing This. Were we still a go? He added Jill to the conversation and said we were. Michael in GypSea had called the lock. I’d been monitoring the radio. A tow was going through the lock, but the lockmaster told him he could get us through between 6:30 and 7 AM. We coordinated via text messaging to leave at 6:30.

Alyse and I hustled to get the boat ready to go. Because it was still pretty cold out, I started the engine and warmed it up. Alyse went out to start untying the boat. She was faced with a mess of criss-crossed lines. “I don’t know how this is tied,” I heard her say.

I came out to help, just as she was untying a knot. “No, that’s not right,” I said. “Anna Marie wouldn’t have tied a knot there.”

Sure enough, Alyse was untying one of the fenders. I caught the fender line before it could drop into the water and tossed the loose fender onto the aft deck of the boat.

“I’ll get them,” I told her. I unfastened the lines Anna Marie had secured to the dock. It was more convoluted than I thought, with lines coming from the boat, going around dock cleats, and then going back to cleats on the boat. All this to secure a boat to a floating dock in a calm basin without any wind or current. I should have “fixed” them the night before. I got them all undone and arranged the aft midship line so Alyse could hold the boat until I was at the helm. I handed it to her and climbed back on board.

A few minutes later, I was putting the boat into reverse and easing us out of the slip. We waited in the big open area of the marina for Chasing This and GypSea to join us and then took up the rear in our procession out of the marina.

The First Day’s Run

GypSea led the way and neither the folks in Chasing This nor I were upset about it. The water was moving a lot more quickly than the day before and even though it looked to be only a foot or two higher, it was full of debris. That left the folks in GypSea to see and avoid the debris while we followed behind them. It wasn’t until we got to the first lock just a few miles downriver that we good a good idea of the kind of debris we were facing. There were floating logs and branches bunched up against the dam and more than a few had flowed into the lock, which was wide open and waiting for us when we arrived.

We slipped in one after the other, Alyse snagged the floating bollard for our boat, and we signaled we were ready to lock down. The gates closed behind us. The water began draining from the lock. We all went down. The gates opened and, one by one, we all slipped out. Again, I took up the rear behind Chasing This with GypSea at the lead.

It wasn’t long before I realized that neither GypSea nor Chasing This had AIS capabilities. I could see tows up ahead of us on my chartplotter but neither boat made a radio call. So I started making them. I’d say something like, “Sara Lee this is the pleasure craft Do It Now downbound in a group of three pleasure craft. We’d like to pass on the one.” The tow would respond and we’d all move together to the appropriate side of the channel to make the pass.

Except the first time. For some reason, GypSea moved to the wrong side of the channel. We were calling him kind of frantically, not understanding what was going on. It wasn’t until the last minute — too late, in my opinion — that he finally altered course, steering across the bow of the oncoming barge to join us on the correct side of the river. After some frantic texting, we discovered that Mike’s radio had just stopped working and he hadn’t heard anything. He got a spare up and running and everything went okay from that point forward. Mike and Spencer both agreed that I should do the calls since I “saw” the tows before they did — even though I was the last boat in the group — and I knew their names from AIS. We also texted among ourselves a lot that day since we didn’t want to chatter on the tow’s hailing frequency.

I have zero photos from that day. (The featured image for this post was actually shot the following morning at Bobby’s Fish Camp.) I spent the entire time steering a course behind Chasing This who was following GypSea. Even then, I occasionally spotted debris in my path that I had to dodge. My notes say that I set the RPM at various times between 1800 and 2200 RPM, but mostly around 1800, which would normally give me about 7 knots. Instead, I got a solid 9 to 11 knots. The water was really moving. It wasn’t until later that day that I learned the reason we were motoring at such low RPMs was because GypSea, in the lead, was having engine issues; its engine overheated at higher RPMs.

Mike led us all over the place, making a zigzag course always within the channel. I don’t think he realized that with the water 2 feet higher than usual, hitting shallow water just outside the channel wasn’t going to happen. But that was okay. Better safe than sorry.

We passed debris in all sizes, from sticks to entire trees and everything in between. It was exhausting being on high alert hour after hour. The Tombigbee River was mostly narrow with long, almost straight parts followed by crazy winding segments that sometimes seemed to double back on itself. Many, many floating channel markers — nuns and cans — were missing; they appeared on my chartplotters but were nowhere in sight. That made us wonder if they were under water. Every once in a while, we’d see a bunch of them washed up on shore among the trees and other debris. Although we spotted an occasional boat ramp, there were no marinas. The anchorages indicated on Aqua Map and my chartplotters were questionable.

 
Here are two screen grabs from Aqua Map that offer examples of just how twisted the river got. You can see the Bashi Creek anchorage in the image on the right.

The “Close Call”

There was one other tow incident I almost forgot to mention here. It’s in my notes as “Close call with another tow because of debris.”

What happened is that we made arrangements to pass an upbound tow on the downbound right side — “on the one.” But because of our speed, we didn’t get to it before it got to a bend in the river so they had to cut in tight toward us. As the last boat, I was the one who was going to be dangerously close to the front of that oncoming tow. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it until it was too late to turn around and get the hell out of the way. So I did something I should’ve known better about: I sped up to get right behind Chasing This.

That wouldn’t have been so bad except that the area we’d driven into was full of debris. GypSea and then Chasing This both cut their throttles in case anything got under their boats. That left me to avoid the debris, the tow, and them.

I cleared the tow and idled down, letting Do It Now simply drift in the debris field until the other two boats got out of the way. It quickly turned around with the current and I began to move with the logs and branches all around us. I let the boat do its thing — why not when we weren’t in any trouble? — until the other two boats were finally out of my way. Then I put it into forward idle, turned around, and motored my way out of the mess slowly.

Maybe I hadn’t learned my lesson about following another boat closely while passing a tow, but at least I’d learned how to handle it better.

Docking at Bobby’s Fish Camp

I had planned on stopping at an anchorage called Bashi Creek about 15 miles short of the infamous Bobby’s Fish Camp. But when I reached it shortly after 1 PM, I just kept going. We were going a lot faster than I’d expected to and the flooded creek entrance didn’t look large enough to fit my boat inside it. Why stop if I could turn a four day cruise into a three day cruise?

Finally, as we neared Bobby’s Fish Camp, Chasing This peeled off. They had decided to skip Bobby’s in favor of an anchorage called Okatuppa Creek less than five miles away. We watched them slip into the creek’s opening and continued on as a group of just two boats. GypSea was still in the lead. By this time, however, the debris had lessened considerably. I was starting to wonder whether we’d gotten a lead on the floodwater.

Bobby’s Fish Camp is the only marina and source of fuel between Demopolis and Mobile. It’s “infamous” for the guy who runs it, who is Bobby’s son-in-law. Everyone seems to agree that the guy is a rude and obnoxious jerk. The facility itself offers not much more than a floating dock, power pedestals that may or may not work, and fuel. In Bobby’s day, there was a restaurant that got great reviews, but it’s closed. There’s no restroom, shower, laundry, or even anyplace nearby worth walking to. It costs $1 per foot per night to stay there and the guy who runs it basically wants you to pay and then stay the hell out of his sight.

In hindsight, it probably would have been better to go to the anchorage with Chasing This. But Bobby’s Fish Camp was part of the Great Loop experience and since I wanted that experience, staying at Bobby’s was worth it. I just hadn’t expected to get this far — nearly 84 nautical miles! — in a day.

GypSea arrived at Bobby’s first, of course, and I hung back. The dock was on the downbound right side of the river and the only way to dock at it was to pass it and then come back up into the current. I wanted to give them plenty of room.

I was not prepared for what they did. Worried that their power cord would not reach the pedestal, Mike in GypSea didn’t pull all the way up on the dock when they reached it. Instead, he stopped less than halfway up the dock, leaving very little space behind their boat for mine.

Meanwhile, I was coming in to dock behind them. Alyse had her instructions: when I reached the dock and she could step off safely, she needed to step off and secure the midship line on the closest cleat. Those were the instructions. Those were always the instructions. Now, with a current in excess of 3 knots and very little room to maneuver, I needed her to follow them to the letter.

I pulled up next to the dock, giving the boat enough power to stay relatively motionless beside it and using the thrusters to keep us close. Alyse stood there on the boat with the aft midship line in her hand. She didn’t move.

Mike’s wife appeared on the dock. (I’m thinking her name was Laura so that’s what I’ll call her.) “Throw me the bowline,” she called.

Alyse dropped the line she was holding and hurried up the gunwales up to the bow. The whole time, I was working hard to keep the boat close to the dock without hitting the back of GypSea in front of me. Forward idle was just a bit too fast so I had to keep dropping out of gear. My boat was straddling the main dock and the fuel dock behind it. Alyse threw the bow line to Laura and Laura tied it off tightly, with very little slack, on a cleat behind her boat.

What do you think happened? The bow of the boat, which is curved, came into the dock. (And no, there was no fender there to protect it, but fortunately it didn’t get scratched.) Because there was no other line on the boat, the stern drifted out into the river. It was exactly what I was trying to prevent by having Alyse secure that aft midship line first.

I think anger and frustration put my brain into a fog because I can’t remember how I fixed this. I may have just grabbed the midship line and leapt from the boat onto the dock. I know I had to secure it loosely there before I could loosen up the bow line so the stern wasn’t out in the river. And I’m pretty sure I had to try to pull the boat forward so it wasn’t halfway onto the fuel dock. And secure two other lines so the boat would definitely not break free on its own.

In the meantime, Mike was happily plugging in his power cord, with plenty still coiled up on his deck to spare. He could have easily moved up another 10 feet and still reached the pedestal.

My blood was simmering just below a boil.

I got the boat secured as well as I could and climbed back on board to shut down the engine. Then I think I just sat for a few minutes to calm down.

Here’s our Nebo log for the day. Download a PDF log file with more info. Track Do It Now on Nebo.

Evening at Bobby’s Fish Camp

The whole time we were coming in, there was a guy in overalls on a tractor with a grading blade fiddling around in the dirt between a handful of buildings and the dock. After I’d walked my pups and gotten back on board with them, he drove down to the boat and shut the engine.

“Do you need fuel?” he asked.

“No,” I told him. “We’re just going to spend the night.”

“You need to pay in the building,” he said flatly.

“Okay,” I replied. “Which building?” I pointed to a trailer that was obviously not the right building but it was closest to the sign that said Bobby’s Fish Camp. “That one?”

“No,” he said. “The one with the stairs.” He gestured up the hill. There were two buildings there. One had a short flight of stairs leading to the front door.

“Someone is in there?” I asked. I was in a mood and I really wanted him to work for his money by making him answer dumb questions.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. Then he fired up his tractor and drove away.

Maybe it wasn’t such a dumb question. Maybe he hoped I’d just go up there and wait around until he decided he was ready to take my money. Screw that. (I really was in a mood.)

I plugged in the boat’s power on a different pedestal than the one Mike had used. I was almost surprised that it worked. Then Laura appeared and I followed her up to the building to take care of business.

She told me that they’d been there a week before on their way south. They’d developed an engine problem and had decided to go back to Demopolis instead of continuing on to Mobile. Apparently it was a different problem than the one they currently had and it was important to stay out of salt water until it was resolved. So they’d gone back the 80 miles they’d come, now fighting a current, to get that problem fixed. They’d stopped at Bobby’s on the way north. I was with them on their second attempt to get to Mobile from Demopolis.

Inside the building, Bobby’s son-in-law remembered her and was actually kind of nice to her. And even me, I think. I paid with a credit card, which I was almost surprised he accepted. I listened them chat and wondered whether he was dumb or just fooling around when he asked if she’d be back next week. We were going south; unless GypSea had another engine problem that required it to stay out of salt water, it was highly unlikely that they’d fight a 3 knot current to return for more of his “hospitality.”

I, for one, had no intention of ever returning, even if I did the Loop every year for the rest of my life. One Bobby’s experience was enough for me.

We retreated to our boats. Alyse and I made and ate dinner. I took the girls for another walk, this time farther up the hill. I saw cats. Lots of cats. I stopped counting after eight.

We went to bed early, as usual. I was more eager than ever to get to Mobile.

(continued in Silas, AL (Bobby’s Fish Camp) to North Mobile, AL (Tensaw River Anchorage))