According to the plan we hatched the previous evening, we rose at 0545 to be ready to listen to channel 17 at 0615 for our orders. Our commodore for the day, Sam from Here’s to Us, had called the Demopolis Lock for instructions. Same came on the radio as scheduled, did a roll call, gave our locking order (we were scheduled for the third pin on the port side), and instructions to pull out of the marina at 0640. Saddle up!

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Exiting the marina was busy, but fun. 14 boats found our way out of the entrance and headed the three miles to the lock. When we arrived, the lock was ready for us. There was a bit of confusion at the lock, so we ended up in that pin on the port side. That gave us a good vantage for pictures.

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Once we cleared the lock, we spent the next couple hours sorting according to each boat’s preferred cruising speed. We settled on 1600 rpm for about 12.5 mph for the 96 miles to Bobby’s Fish Camp – our planned destination for the night.

The cruise was pleasant and uneventful. The ending was not.

Bobby’s Fish Camp is a legendary Looper stop and the only fuel stop between Demopolis (mile 216) and Mobile (mile 0). We certainly have the range to do the whole trip, but with three days of driving and using the generator, we wanted to have the cushion of fueling at Bobby’s.

Bobby’s Fish Camp is just that… a camp for fishing. It has a single dock that fits two, maybe three, boats. But then boats can raft up together as deep as they want. When we rounded the bend to see it, there were three boats on the dock rafted three deep. We got in close to chat and we could have rafted to make us the fourth deep, but decided to anchor instead.

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We headed a mile upstream to Turkey Creek Landing to anchor. When we got there, we went slowly into the mouth of the creek as deep as we could go, which wasn’t far. The creek was eight to nine feet deep in the middle, but only about 60 feet wide with fallen trees sticking out from the shore.

We turned to face upstream (the current moves from the river into the creek) and set the anchor. Then the fun began. Because there isn’t any room to swing in the narrow creek, we decided to tie lines to the trees on shore to keep us steady. We dropped the dinghy, grabbed a long line, and rowed it to the north shore. After a few attempts and having to step out of the dinghy up to my knees in thick Alabama mud, we succeeded in tying to the tree. Then the boat drifted to the north and into the trees above.

Crap.

I got another line and rowed to the south bank. After a bit more work and another muddy tromp, I secured a second line. Now we had the anchor and a line running to a tree on each bank. We weren’t going anywhere.

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I rowed out into the mouth to chat with another looper who had anchored in front of us. I’m sure they were amused by our sophisticated anchoring techniques. Sometimes you enjoy the show. Sometimes you’re the show.

Only later did we learn that local hunters like to boat up into Turkey Creek to hunt. It goes very deep into a wetland area and we learned that people will hunt deer and anything else in there. A few times that evening and night, we saw hunters in bass or jon boats work their way in and out of the creek. We were worried that one of them would come through too fast and decapitate themselves on our lines, but we didn’t find any floating heads in the morning.

Whew… another new experience and another lesson learned.