Heading South Fast

Our last two days have brought with them some change. For starters, we are in semi-warm humid weather, big plus. Second, due to the large spacing in between adequate anchorage, we are putting in very long days – 13+ hours. We have entered the Tombigbee River and finally we are using Señor Tutti again, our auto pilot, whose main goal is to hold the tiller straight, giving our hands a break and making our trip more efficient. Regardless of the changes, we are still meeting very interesting people and listening to amazing literature like South, The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

South, is the first-hand account of an epic and inspiring adventure of the Endurance‘s 22-man crew, who in the pursuit of crossing Antarctica by foot/dog are frozen in pack ice with their vessel and have to find their way back to civilization. Sir Shackleton, a detail-driven writer, does a fairly good job at inspiring us to keep pushing our miles as we cruise through these warm, calm, iceberg-free waters.

This morning we woke up at 4:10 am and left the Midway Marina, were we restocked Surkha, at 4:35 am. We went through five locks and reached our anchorage at 4:40pm, only to find that it was not deep enough. After “bumping the bottom” a number of times, we were forced to continue 30 more miles in search of deeper water. Tomorrow, we will leave Mississippi State and enter Alabama and at this pace we might even make it to Demopolis, the last big city and marina before Mobile, AL and the Gulf. This means that by this time Friday, we might be bathing Surkha in salt water for her first time.