Kingfisher Marina

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 185 - October 2. 2017

The cruise from Rattlesnake Bend to Demopolis took only an hour or so. On the way between Rattlesnake Bend and Demopolis, we passed the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers. This marked the end of the Tenn-Tom Waterway and the beginning of the Black Warrior Tombigbee Waterway, which will take us down to Mobile!

I finally had enough cell service to call Demopolis Yacht Basin to inquire about a reservation, and was told two nights would be no problem. I still did not know the relationship between Demopolis Yacht Basin and Kingfisher Marina, because they both have the same telephone number, but was relieved that we now had secured a slip for two nights.

We went into Kingfisher Marina first, but not seeing a fuel dock, we turned around and went back out to the river, and a litte farther downstream to the entrance to the Demopolis Yacht Basin and pulled up to the fuel dock. Patty looked around and said "Something is wrong here." See if you can spot it!

Demopolis Yacht Basin - no boats!

Give yourself 10 points if you said "Where are the boats?"  While we were fueling, Matt, the fuel dock attendant or perhaps harbor master, told us the sad story of the Demopolis Yacht Basin. Over the years, one flood after another had deposited so much silt in the basin that it had shoaled so much most boats could not get in or out! We could have probably in the C-Dory, but Matt said that the Demopolis Yacht Basin is no longer a marina, has no future as a marina, and functions only as a fuel dock. There actually was one sailboat in the marina, and we wondered if it would be there ever after! The fuel dock is set up for towboats to fuel on the outside of the dock and pleasure craft to fuel on the inside.

After we fueled, Matt assigned us our slip at Kingfisher and called Anna-Marie on the VHF to tell her we would be coming into Kingfisher Marina in about 10 minutes. No response, so he called her on the phone. Seems the battery in her handheld VHF was dead.  We paid for the fuel and dockage at Demopolis Yacht Basin and headed over to Kingfisher, which is just a few hundred yards back upstream.

Anna-Marie was there at slip A-8 to catch our lines. The wind was blowing and I got blown past the slip on the first try, so I backed up far enough for another try, and got in OK with Anna-Marie and Larry Crowder, the owner of LiLa Blue, a very nice 1989 Krogen Manatee in the next slip, to help us get in and tied up!  

The Kingfisher Marina is a very nice marina! It has mostly covered slips that serve mainly permanent slip holders and long-term transients, but they also accept short term transients as well. 

Covered slips at Kingfisher Marina

Kingfisher Marina entrance with tow passing on Black Warrior Tombigbee Waterway outside entrance

Now here is your history lesson for the day! When we had been in Athens in 1969 on one of our vacations while we were in the Peace Corps in Turkey, we toured the Acropolis. We both have a very fond recollection of our tour guide explaining, with her delightful Greek accent, that "Acro" means "hill" and "polis" means "city," so the Acropolis was a "City on the Hill." Demopolis seems to have something in common with Acropolis. I found when I Googled it that according to Wikipedia, the name "Demopolis" means in Greek "the People's City" or "City of the People." The name was chosen to honor the democratic ideals of the French expatriates who founded the city. First settled in 1817, it is one of the oldest continuous settlements in Alabama. 

We arranged with Anna-Marie for the loaner car tomorrow, and spent pretty much the rest of the afternoon in some serious deferred boat cleaning, washing her as best we could. I also tried the FSR (Fiberglass Stain Remover) on the area of the bow by the windlass - the result was amazing! I figure several hundreds of dollars worth of FSR followed by Shurehold Buff Magic and Pro Polish and Sealer, and we'll have her looking good again! But the big job will have to wait until we are back in Birch Bay!

After cleaning the boat, we cleaned ourselves! The showers here at Kingfisher Marina, which is a new marina, are very nice, and the marina staff is justly proud of them! A shave, shower and clean clothes were just what the doctor ordered for me after so many nights on the hook!

After sundowners, Patty humored me and we had a great ribeye steak and baked potato with butter, sour cream and bacon bits dinner. Not her favorite but a ribeye done to rare perfection on the Magma and sliced across the grain is just one of my favorites, and she tolerates it!

Tomorrow we will take the loaner car to do some shopping, Patty will do the laundry, and I will try to write one more blog entry, since I fear that once we leave Demopolis we will be entering the Valley of Cell Signal Death most of the way to Mobile. This is a 212 mile stretch with no towns along the way, so it is hard to imagine the cell carriers building towers just so Loopers can stay in touch! So, if you do not see any new blog posts after tomorrow, be assured I am still writing them daily but simply cannot post them until we are back in civilization!