Wrapping up this leg

Tombigbee—Terry says it was like getting in your car and going down the Natchez Trace for 450 miles at 10 MPH. We got through the river with only a few surprises. We figured in time for delays at the locks—our experience had told us we could wait up to a half a day for our turn to lock through. Of the 15 locks, the longest we had to wait was probably 45 minutes. We were very lucky. Fog—when we were in Knoxville a few years ago, we had fog delay us every time we set out. We had absolutely no delays because of fog. Courtesy cars were available at a couple of the docks for a couple of hours at a time. That is about enough time to go out and find a nice restaurant for lunch or dinner. Glad we were sort of “out of season” and didn’t have too much competition. Electronics—we Skyped with Katie and the kids 3 times and that was fun. Nick kept us up to date on his activities and Next Chapter. In Mississippi we did not have cell reception for days at a time. Maps and Navionics on the phone gave me my own radar charts and street maps which were really cool and kept me out of the Captain’s way. Keeping in contact through phone, email, and Facebook was enough to make us feel we weren’t in Outer Mongolia. Internet on the phone and computer was great for finding restaurants, cars, and keeping up with what is going on in the world. We have a MI-FI that gives us internet connection through LTE G4 reception but when there is no cell reception there is no internet either. We expected this and it was fine. At the docks, usually wi-fi was offered but not to be counted on from the transient docks. We were glad we had our mi-fi. Terry rigged up a Direct TV dish for TV reception (one dock had cable for transients) and it was fun to catch a little TV. TV reception was not available about half the time but we were pleasantly surprised when it was and saw some news and some football. Texting was also something I was glad to have—little conversations that were had at convenient times for all. Fitz is coming around on the texting thing. Weather—we wore our long johns, long pants and sweat shirts more than we thought we would ever wear them. Everywhere in the South, they were having record low temps. Daily we said we were going south to get warm. That is something to look forward to—not there yet. Today we will ready the boat for leaving for the next month. We went back to Turner on Mobile bay because it is better protected and they will be able to fix the dings on the hull that the storm caused last week. We leave in the morning and feel good about our first venture to the big water. Learned some lessons and gathered some confidence. We can do this!