Coffeeville to Alabama River Anchorage

First thing this morning was the last lock on the loop. Gotta say, I won't miss those, at least not the ones on the TennTom. On one hand, after 98 locks (or so I've been told, since I was too lazy to count) I've acquired the skill of sidling up to a wall, right at some bollard or pin, and right before the boat touches the wall. Kinda proud of that. 

On the other hand, lockmasters are just bothers. This morning, for example, we had 7 boats wanting to lock through. One of us hailed the lockmaster and were told to come on down, the lock would be ready. We came down. The lock was not ready. In fact we waiting 30 minutes for the lock to get ready. We called you! You said to come! We could have hung out at Bobby's a little longer! 🙄 We realized this on the last lock, but next time, don't call for a 7 am lockthrough. We suspect the shift changes, and so what the first guy says isn't what the 2nd guy does.

Crazy S turn

Mostly today was a bit of a race. Weather was coming, with possible thunderstorms. With no marinas between Bobby's and Mobile, we had to pick out an anchorage protected enough should the weather turn ugly. The good news is there are several on this stretch, little tributary rivers surrounded by trees. We picked the Alabama River and tucked ourselves in for the night. Three other boats joined us.

We are a little nervous, though. Not because of the weather. But of the 4 boats here, we were the only ones facing the river, the other 3 are facing us. 

Goodbye locks and freshwater.

When anchoring you want to park down current or down wind. We admit we aren't doing that at the moment. We dropped a stern anchor as well as the bow, and we're largely hanging off the stern. However, we're back in tidal waters, and for most of the night we will (or should) be in the right direction once the tide changes. But still being newbs in all this we wonder if we're missing something. We set an anchor alarm, which will go off if we moved too far (meaning we're dragging our anchor since the stern isn't near are robust as the bow anchor). We'll see how it goes.