November 6, 2008: Near Aberdeen, MS

Today we begin our journey down the Tenn-Tom Waterway. Back in 1792, Marquis De Montcalm, a French explorer of the north Mississippi, was forced to dump some of his valuable cannons overboard in his escape from the Indians. He was afraid of getting stuck in the shallow water of the TomBigbee River. His letter to the King of France requesting work to open the waterway for exploration may have been the first written suggestion of the Tenn-Tom waterway. In 1810 there was a petition to the US congress to create the path to shorten the trip to Mobile Bay by 800 miles to open commerce for Tennessee. This huge undertaking was discussed for decades before the Army Corps of Engineers were finally funded for the task in 1971. The job was to connect the Tennessee River to the TomBigbee River to provide navigation from the Midwest US to the Gulf of Mexico without traversing the lower Mississippi River. The canal was completed in June, 1985 that connects the Tennessee River through the TomBigbee to the Black Warrior River and is now the popular route for pleasure craft moving to and from the heartland of the US.

The first thing on our morning agenda was to navigate the first lock of Tenn-Tom waterway. After breakfast we called the Whitten Lock master and he said he would be ready to “takes us down” in about 30 minutes. So we took our time pulling our anchor and cruising up to the dam to find two other Sunseeker Yachts already in line. These two new boats, one 75 feet and the other 55 feet, were being moved south from Michigan by professional captains. Once docked in the lock, we all descended 84 feet. This lock and dam are the only hydroelectric plant on the Tenn Tom waterway even though there are 12 locks.

Montgomery Lock gave us a pretty view of the river below over the lock doors as we pulled all the way into the 400 foot marker. Descending 30 feet into the water way below, we entered the TomBigbee River. We are traveling along at about 9 knots. The other two boats, who are not paying for their own fuel, were traveling at top speed with more urgency for their destination, so we dropped behind and enjoyed a leisurely cruise through three more locks by ourselves this afternoon. Next to the Rankin Lock there were three spillways with waterfalls and acres of grass. It descended 30 feet. Then we went through the Fulton Lock and Wilkens locks, all run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. These are locks that were built to maintain the appropriate water levels We have now settled in an anchorage near Aberdeen for the night.