The past few weeks have, once again, been filled with meeting new friends and becoming reacquainted with old ones. We have also been completing several projects on "Life's2Short" and enjoying holiday activities at the Demopolis Yacht Basin. Most of the permanent live-aboards have headed south by now so the folks who are currently at the Yacht Basin will be spending the winter there. Several decorate their boats for the holiday season, so we added a few decorations to "Life's2Short."
See the wreath around the spotlight, the candy canes on top of the antennae and the red bow on the front rail of the boat.
Most of the people who live on the dock get to know one another quite well, sharing stories, helping each other with boat work and enjoying "Happy Hour" most evenings. One of the many new people we've come to know is Pete Andrews. Pete has been living on his boat "Woodja" for the past ten years and is a wealth of information when it comes to boat maintenance and cruising the waterways and islands. He even went so far as to loan us his charts and guidebooks for the Bahamas, an area we hope to visit in the near future. The Admiral became quite fond of Pete, inviting him to join us for dinner on several occasions and making banana cream pie and other treats for him while we were there.
The Admiral with her buddy, Pete.
The Admiral with two other dock friends, Steve (left) and Wayne (right).
The "Happy Hour" gang on Pete's boat, "Woodja."
The Sunday after Thanksgiving starts the week long event called Christmas on the River (COTR), probably the single biggest event that happens in Demopolis all year long. COTR events include the lighting of the community Christmas tree, holiday craft shows, BBQ cook offs and galas, culminating with the COTR parade. The parade actually takes place on the river with lighted floats depicting Christmas scenes and ends with a wonderful fireworks show. Unfortunatly, 48 hours before parade day, Demopolis was hit by a tornado and high winds which destroyed all but four of the floats. Thankfully, the marina didn't experience any damage as the tornado hit about a mile south.
These pictures show some of the floats that were destroyed when the high winds hit Demopolis.
Looking back at the marina from where the floats were sitting when the storm hit.
We also had a visit on Friday of that week from Mike & Mary Hall from "WhatDazeIt," the couple who helped us cross the Gulf this past spring and who have been such a HUGE support to us. The visit was short but we will be catching up with them next week in the Panama City, Florida, area as we get ready to cross the Gulf once again.
Another special event that occurs the final Saturday of COTR week is Fred's Gumbo Fest. Fred Hansard, who owns the fuel dock and manages the operation of the Yacht Basin, spends 15 hours preparing seafood gumbo for all the folks at the marina and some of his business associates. Brenda and I were recruited to help stir the big pots of gumbo that cooked for 8-10 hours, beginning early Saturday morning.
Fred, the gumbo king!
We planned on leaving Demopolis the next day, but Fred invited us to join him and his team for their employee holiday party Tuesday evening. I guess Fred figured since I had been helping his team around the boatyard, I was an "unofficial" employee. As we have mentioned before, we can't say enough great things about the people at the Demopolis Yacht Basin. They are truly an outstanding group of folks who we look forward to seeing again.
These are some of the many fine people from the Yacht Basin enjoying the spread at Fred's holiday party.
We finally untied from the dock at Demopolis about 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 6th, and Pete and Dale, another dock friend, were there to give us our final send off. We had only planned on going about 75 miles, but since we were making great time going with the current we ended up going 97 miles, our longest single day trip to date (except for crossing the Gulf, of course).
We made it to Bobby's Fish Camp just as it was getting dark and found an empty dock awaiting "Life's2Short." We got the boat tied up and plugged in for what was to be one of three very cold nights ahead of us on the river. We left Bobby's early Thursday morning and locked through with Grebe, a towboat that was running without a load due to a broken shaft. We arrived 64 miles later at the Alabama River Cutoff, a very nice clear water anchorage.
Yesterday was only a five-hour day as we weren't ready to get into the city of Mobile quite yet. We spent the night at Big Bayou Canot about ten miles upriver from Mobile. As mentioned above, the nights have been very cold since we left Demopolis, but we are looking forward to finding some warmer weather once we reach the Gulf coast. We are planning to meet up with Mike & Mary later this week (Thursday or so) and possibly do the Gulf crossing next weekend or early the following week, depending on the weather. Stay tuned and keep your fingers crossed for us!
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