Mile 168.5 on BWTB Waterway - Old Lock 2 Anchorage

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

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 192 - October 9. 2017

We set our alarm for 5:30 a.m. to be ready for a 7:00 a.m. departure, but as it turned out, we really did not need to get up so early!  Not only was it still quite dark at 7:00 a.m. but it was also a bit foggy, so we and Cecil and Danny on Desperado decided to delay our departure until 7:30 a.m. Getting up early did let me have extra time for things like filling the water tank and walking Baxter. Coffee and toast, and it was 7:30 a.m. soon enough!

Visibility had improved somewhat by 7:30 a.m., and we departed with Cecil and Danny on Desperado, Rico on his sailboat., and one other trawler, headed for the Demopolis Lock about three miles downstream. Cecil had telephoned the lock master, who was expecting us and had the lock ready.  We entered the lock except the fourth boat, which radioed the lock master that they were having engine trouble and were turning around and going back. The view of the downside of the dam of the Demopolis Lock was very pretty, but unfortunately, we did not have a chance to take a picture.

Our boats all travel at different speeds. Desperado travels at 8+ mph, we travel (with the push or the river current) between 7 and 8 mph, and Rico, whose 25 foot sailboat is powered by a 9.9 hp outboard, travels at about 6 mph, so we soon got fairly widely spread out. We were able to keep Desperado in sight for quite a long time, but with  all  the serpentine bends in the Black Warrior - Tombigbee Waterway and the speed differential, we eventually lost sight of them.

We knew they were headed for an anchorage about five miles farther downstream than the one we had selected. Picking anchorages out of Skipper Bob, or Active Captain for that matter, is a bit of a crap shoot! You don't know what you will actually find until you get there!

We had picked Old Lock 2 at Mile 168.5 from Active Captain. There were only three reviews, but they were all favorable, and what carried the day was that there was a boat ramp, which had been mentioned in one review as being available for landing pets. We were amazed that we covered the 47 miles so quickly and arrived at about 2 p.m.

We made a couple of attempts at positioning the boat in the anchorage. BWTB anchorages are all mostly just notches in the river out of the channel so the tows can safely pass, although there are several that are actually creeks off the channel. The first one of those, however, Bashi Creek, at 70 miles from Demopolis, was farther than we wanted to travel. The first spot seemed too close to the shore. The second spot seemed too far out in the channel. The third spot was just right!  We anchored in about 12 feet just past the end of the rip rap for the boat ramp, and just to be safe, we ran a stern line around a tree on the shore and pulled the stern in farther away from the channel. We confirmed by VHF with the fist passing tow that we were safely out of the channel.

Screenshot of Old Lock 2 anchorage

Daydream tucked into the notch off the channel at Old Lock 2 at Mile 168.5 

We thought there might be some remnants of Old Lock 2 at the anchorage but there was no evidence we could see that there had ever been a lock at this location. What we did find at the top of the boat ramp, though, completely blew us away.

There was a large Corps of Engineers park, just like the parks that we had seen associated with active locks, that was still being maintained. It had acres of grass that was still being mowed, picnic tables with BBQ stands, trash cans, pit toilets with TP and working water spigots. This is not a facility that we had expected to find on the Black Warrior - Tombigbee Waterway. Strangest of all to me was that this park had not even been mentioned in any of the Active Captain reviews. I can only guess that nobody else had ever walked up to the top of the boat ramp, because if they had, they surely would have mentioned the park! Or maybe it didn't matter to them because they don't have pets and don't ever get off their boats. But if you travel with your  four legged friends, not only does shore access matter, but so does the quality of the shore! We have had shore access where Baxter had to be content on a 20 foot mud bar!  Not only is there shore access here, but there is the best imaginable spot for Fido to romp in the park!  Old Lock 2 anchorage at Mile 168.5 is a hidden treasure!

A bit later, we saw Rico coming down the river in this sailboat, and he pulled over for a minute. We thought he might like to stay here with us, but he had decided he was going to push on to Bashi Creek. He has more stamina than we do for sure! Seventy miles at 6 miles per hour makes for a long day!

Tomorrow we press on to Bobby's Fish Camp, which is the only marina / fuel stop on the Black Warrior - Tombigbee Waterway!