Starting on the Tenn-Tom

This morning we traveled down the last 20 miles of the Tennessee River and through the Pickwick Lock and Dam (went up 55’) with good friends from Bay City, Michigan, Brad & Frank on sailboat Evergreen and into Pickwick Lake then to the Yellow Creek, the start of the famous Tenn-Tom Waterway (Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway). We are now at 341 feet above sea level and will be going through 12 locks that will take us down to sea level between here and Mobile (about 450 miles away).

We enjoyed the change of terrain when we entered Pickwick Lake. High bluffs with beautiful homes at the top of the ridges on the lakeshore and deep water. This looks like a great sailing lake. We stopped for our overnight at Grand Harbor Marina, located at the 3 corners of Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama borders. It is a beautiful new marina with very friendly staff, especially Chip Lucas the Harbor Master who helped us with a lot of good tips about the area and the river. We finally found the book (The Tenn-Tom Nitty-Gritty Cruise Guide) we have been looking for several days here at the marina. In fact Chip introduced us to the author Fred Myers who lives here aboard his fine boat ”Liberty Belle”. After hot showers we had a great seafood dinner at Freddy T’s nearby.