Counce to Killen, AL

Today was a big one—literally.

We tackled Wilson Lock, the largest lock of our summer at 100 feet. Navionics warned us ahead of time that this one “moves alarmingly fast,” and we had to go up in it.

Ben called to get their next opening and was told that pleasure craft is allowed through 9-10 and 4-5 only, so we'd have to wait until 4 to start that adventure. 

We made a midday stop around 1 PM at Florence Harbor Marina to fill up on water and get showered while we waited. The guy working at the marina told us that Wilson Lock was broken and that only one barge at a time could fit through. Apparently there were hundreds of barges waiting in the queue, so that was why the hours were restricted for pleasure craft. They were super backlogged!

Instead of one massive 100-foot lift, we’d have to go through the auxiliary lock, consisting of two smaller 50-foot locks. 

We made it to the staging area around 3 PM, and even though they’d told us the next lockage wouldn’t be until 3:30, they let us in early since we were the only pleasure craft waiting. This dang lock beat us up pretty good- physically and mentally. Here we were thinking we had a good feel for doing locks like this, and then we wound up being tossed around and even popping one of our fenders! It got stuck in a pocket in the lock wall and as the boat went up, the fender stayed in the hole, and popped! Then, we had to manually control the boat with our boat hooks to keep it from getting banged up.

Once we got to the top of the first lock, an employee mentioned to us: "This lock isn’t very friendly to rec boats.” Unfortunately, we noticed.

As the doors opened and we finished the first lock, we had to quickly flip our fenders and lines from starboard to port before we tied onto the floating ballard for the second lock. It was a scramble but we made the switch in time. By the time we wrapped up the second lock, the sky had turned gray, and just as we cruised out, the rain started.

We really wanted to squeeze in Wheeler Lock today too and anchor just beyond it. As we approached around 6 PM, we called to see when the next opening would be. Three hours. Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. We found a spot to anchor just ahead of it and decided to try again in the morning.

As our anchor dug into the mud at our anchorage, we could see bubbles indicating it was digging into the mud. Neat to see because the bubbles are not visible very often.

Locks today: 2

Locks of the summer: 17

Locks of the loop: 131