On Thursday, October 14, 2021, Carlos drove Captain Tom and me to Alred Marina to begin our journey to Mobile Bay with Lollipop. We provisioned Lollipop, toted our clothing and other items aboard, and Carlos left us on Lollipop without ground transportation. We spent a day putting things in their place. Used Alred’s courtesy car to visit our favorite Guntersville restaurant before we started our journey.
We released Lollipop’s lines on Saturday, October 16, 2021, and started down the Tennessee River. The morning started windy and cloudy to give way to a beautiful day. I experienced my first lock right away at the Guntersville Lock, and this lock was deceptively easy for me as I handled the lines to secure Lollipop to the bollard while the lock lowered us to the next section of the Tennessee River.
Lollipop docked at Ingalls free dock at Decatur, AL, for the night. We were able to get the UGA game on an OTA TV station, and we Ubered to dinner in Decatur.
We arrived at Joe Wheeler Marina on Sunday and were greeted at docking by several other Great Harbour owners to take our lines. We spent the next few days at the AGLCA Fall Rendezvous where we attended seminars and met many other boat owners and future boat owners. It just so happened there were three Great Harbour 37s docked at the same dock. We all toured each other’s boats and it was interesting to see that all Great Harbours are the same but different.
When the AGLCA Fall Rendezvous was over many loopers continued on with their loop by heading to the Tombigbee Waterway. We had to leave just before dawn in order to get through the Wheeler lock ahead of the commercial traffic for the day. Commercial traffic has priority when using the locks. We traveled through 15 locks total from Alred Marina to Turner Marine. The bollard at Wheeler Lock was above my head and I could not get the rope looped around without Tom’s help. After this, I started using the boat hook to help loop the rope around the bollards, the bollards were below the boat deck in the remainder of the locks. The easiest bollards so far are like the Coffeeville Locks.
We did see a few animals along the way. Egrets, fish, a bald eagle, deer, and some pelicans. Some loopers have seen pigs. We passed a lot of barges and some dredge operations. On the lower part of the Tombigbee waterway, there were lots of curves or oxbows. Of course, as we got closer to Mobile Bay we saw lots of industrial traffic and ships.
We arrived at Turner Marine on schedule, so that we could head to the GHTA, Great Harbour Trawler Assoc., annual meeting at Amelia Island on November 1. We are back in tidal waters and because we aren’t on floating docks we are using the ladder for the first time. Lollipop will stay at Turner Marine until we resume the loop sometime in January, but the Admiral and Captain will head back to the dirt home for the holidays and await the birth of our first grandchild.
