Our unplanned vacation stay at Demopolis, 11-4-2014 thro 11-8-2014

Tuesday, November 4 through Saturday, November 8

Kingfisher Bay Marina is a very new marina and still under construction. The old part of the marina still exists, and houses the ship’s store, the repair facility, and a restaurant. And they are still dredging for more expansion!  This marina is significant in the journey because every boat heading down the Tenn-Tom has to stop here.   It is the last stop for fuel, pump outs and supplies before Mobile, some 217 miles away. So they are adding to their facilities to accommodate the snow birds heading south.

Kathy headed down to Kingfisher Bay Marina

Ongoing dredging efforts will greatly increase the space available.  The existing marina is seen in the background.

In order to use the courtesy car, one takes a golf cart about a half a mile to the ship’s store, picks up the car, and hopefully, if there are two folks doing this, one person drives the golf cart back to the new side of the marina, the other person drives the car back and the whole procedure is reversed on the return trip.

Kingfisher Marina is very nice, but is very large.  From the transient dock, it was 2 blocks or so to the marina bathrooms and laundry.  It is the nicest laundry/shower area in a marina so far.  Imagine, four washers, four dryers, three showers for each of the men's and women's area…and a big screen TV.  And rocking chairs as well as a “Take a book, leave a book” library.  Who would have thought that Kathy would start to rate marina laundry/shower areas! 

When we exclaimed about how nice it was, we were told by the owner that his wife designed it.  Darn good job she did.  It sounds silly, I know, but on an extended trip, those niceties make the days so much better.

Tuesday the 4th was a pretty morning, but we decided to sleep in…until 7 or so, to celebrate our arrival at the halfway-point to Mobile. 

The agenda for the day was full.  At the top of Kathy’s list was grocery shopping. Tim’s consisted of getting the mildew off the ceiling and the other surfaces of the v-berth.  It is an icky job, but one that made us both breathe and sleep better.

Shopping when travelling by boat is not like heading to your favorite hometown store.  You have to schedule a courtesy car, locate the store, and finally find the items you need in the store. And lately, it has been a Walmart. 

Elizabeth and Daniel, from Brisa, and Kathy tag-teamed the courtesy car.  Typically, a courtesy car is borrowed for two hours per boat.  By going together, the courtesy-car time increases to four hours.  That’s enough to get to a Walmart, stop at another grocery (looking for Jiffy Pop), get Daniel’s haircut, etc. etc. 

Tim did a yeoman’s job of getting the mildew off the ceiling and the other surfaces of the v-berth, a task that didn’t get done in our flurry of activity to leave Minnesota. 

Despite our efforts, there were still things to do by day’s end. Our traveling buddies on Brisa made the decision to leave the next day.  We decided to stay and finish up tasks.

Wednesday the 5^th started with a sad note.  We saw Brisa off. We had been traveling with them since October 21^st ; that’s six marinas, and 10 locks! Apparently Dany, the five year old, upon learning that we weren’t leaving with them told his Mom that Tim had to leave with them.  He just HAD to!  We know that we will see them in Bradenton, FL, where we will dock for some time.  That is their home base. And the home of our friends, the Finneys. 

So we helped them out, took pictures, did hugs and wished them good journey.



Brisa off to new adventures

Meanwhile, a sailboat came into the marina, and docked behind our boat. It looked familiar, and sure enough we heard a knock on our boat.  The single hander (meaning that the captain and crew are one person), Captain Charley, was from our home marina in Lake City, as well as from our same dock.  And he owned Half Moon…a boat that our friends, the Macks, had owned.

Kathy stands next to Half Moon, a boat that left our home marina in Lake City three weeks after us.

We did chores, and determined that we would set out the next morning, early, with whatever flotilla was leaving.

November 6, Thursday
Part of Kathy’s job while at the marina is to “work the docks”.  It doesn’t sound as tawdry as you might think! She wanders from dock to dock trying to figure out what boats are leaving the next morning, and how we can all move out together. 

The locks, especially those that are within a few miles of a marina, prefer that the flotilla of folks leaving a marina “lock through together”.  So departing times are set, if possible, the night before.  Kathy has the fun job, because there are usually several parties going on!!  So last night, 8 boats agreed that the departing time for this morning was 7:45 AM

We were up at 4:30.  Tim started and checked the engine.  OH NO!!  He found the engine now leaked fuel in two places. 

After much discussion, we decided to be prudent, and to not leave with the flotilla.  The next leg of the journey would be long with no marinas or services.  It was just too risky when we had questions about the reliability of the engine. Tim worked most of the day on the engine, all to no avail.

Discouraged, we decided to call in the mechanics from the shop right away on Friday morning, knowing that the shop will be closed over the weekend.  We went to bed wondering if we would ever get to Mobile.

November 7,^. Friday, another flotilla, including Charley on Half Moon, took off to head south.  We headed to the marina shop via golf cart to schedule a mechanic's visit for later that day.

Sure enough, the mechanic showed up, they fixed the problem, and we were good to go the next morning.

Kathy walked the docks to determine the morning departure time.  She was invited to have a glass of wine with Anne and Lou aboard their boat, Annie’s Song.  We had met Anne and Lou several times, at different marinas.  As a matter of fact, they were  one of the two other couples with whom we visited the Civil War Interpretive Center in Corinth, MS.

They live aboard their boat, and it was a sweet one.  Lou reminded Kathy that it is always a bad idea to look at boats bigger than yours!  I think he was right. The big screen TV and the recliners swept her away.

Anyway, times had been set to leave at 7:45 the next morning.

November 8, Saturday
As we were waking up, Tim shared that his concern for the day was that he discovered he didn’t have an extra engine fan belt.  Tim is the king of spare parts, and so for him to not have a spare fan belt was pretty upsetting to Kathy.  We again made the decision to not leave Demopolis, and concentrate on finding a spare.  Remember, the shop is closed.  We could wait until Monday, when the shop opened, or try to find an adequate substitute. 

After several hours of research, Tim discovered that the local O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store had one that fit the bill.  We called for the courtesy car, were told we could have the car for an hour from 12-1, we jumped on the golf cart, raced to the ship's store, jumped in the F-10 pick up and headed to O’Reilly’s.  Picked up the belt, grabbed a bite at MacDonald's, raced back to drop off the car, walked back to "our side" of the marina. 


Demopolis Yacht Basin fuel dock and ship's store. The large supports are for mooring tow boats

 And went to the boat to test the belt.

It was too short.

Called the ships store, said we only needed the car for an hour.  Did the whole process again.  Left the golf cart there, and when we came back, went to the boat first, and Tim thought he had hit pay dirt.  Seemed like this belt would do the trick.

Took the car back, got on the golf cart, back to the boat.  Tim fitted it again.  It was too wide.

(Is this starting to sound like a modern day marina adaption of Goldilocks and the three bears?)

This time, Kathy was dispatched to head back to O’Reily’s while Tim worked a bit on the water leak that had appeared…oh, did we forget to mention that?

Kathy called about the courtesy car, walked up to the golf cart parking area…but no golf carts were to be had.   Some folks from a neighboring boat were headed out, and they had a rental car, and graciously took Kathy to the courtesy car.  This time, she had the old fan belt as well as the belt to return.

On the way down the ramp, in the dark, Kathy caught her foot on one of the dock grates, and came down hard.  Both knees were scraped up pretty badley, and she finally succumbed to tears.  Limped down to the ships store, the store guy gave her some peroxide for her wounds, and she went off, for the 3^rd time to O’Reilly’s.

The boys at O’Reilly’s took pity on Kathy (well, she was bleeding, after all), and they measured the belt, found one that they thought would work.  Back to the ships store, the store guy offered to give her a ride back to the boat.

Three was the charm.

We are leaving Sunday morning, as soon as light will let us.   Finally.