After a rocky night (we chose the wrong side of the lock wall and banged into it all night during some crummy weather), we woke up dark and early to leave the Wilson Lock to head just a few miles to our Rendezvous destination at Joe Wheeler State Park. We were happy to be led by The Lower Place. It’s just a few miles between the locks, but The Lower Place had called ahead and knew there were tows waiting to go through. I don’t know what kind of sweet talking they did, but The Lower Place led our flotilla of three in between the two large waiting tows and we hooked up once again to the wall of the auxiliary lock.
We waited just a short time before the gates opened and the lockmaster directed us to head into the lock–ahead of the waiting tows. Yeehaw!
Once we were out, it was just a mile or so to the Joe Wheeler State Park. We asked for a pump out, and we were directed to the “second building,” which was behind the fuel dock. We saw what we thought was the second building, but there was no fuel pump. It turns out the first building is just massive and looks like two. We eventually found the fuel dock, and all was right with the world.
While we waited for our poo to be pumped, the wind picked up. We probably should have just stayed where we were, but we went over to our slip. We were expected to share with a sailboat that was already there. We tried approaching a couple times, but we kept getting pushed into the dock. We ended up parking on the other side of the slip we were going to be in, and decided to try again when the wind died down.
Well, that was smart.
The wind died down, our dockhands brought experienced reinforcements, and Owen backed out of the slip we were in and right into the one we were supposed to be in.
We haven’t had issues docking at all on this trip until the one time there were 50 boats waiting to meet for a boating convention. Figures.
Once we were tied up for good, we were able to see that we were in a pretty cool place. More on that later!
Bowlines Thrown 