Day 163 Jack Takes a Swim

Well, you may have noticed yesterday's blog ended mid- sentence - that's because as I was going to type ...headed back to the boat and called it a night after a fun day with Gary. John and I heard a ruckus on deck then a splash. Panic! Captain Jack took his first swim of the trip. I dropped the IPad (somehow hit "publish") ran around to the other side of the finger dock and there was our stubborn, mischievous cat swimming back to the dock towards me - complaining all the way. He wanted to jump from the boat to the side of the dock that was farthest from him. We told him no, but some felines have to learn the hard way. Hoisted his ample butt out of the water and he spent the next couple hours licking river water off of himself. We were told there are 2 gators in the area so lucky for Jack, they were not in the vicinity. Leisurely left the marina at 10:30 this morning and headed down river. Spent the day playing "dodge the water hyacinth". Traveled with new-to-us Loopers, Seahorse and Pimora, and our ol' buddies Bob and Duncan on El Nido. Scenery was pleasant, river was lazy. Passed a phone booth. Ya don't see many phone booths anymore, let alone one on the bank of a river. Since we got such a late start, we couldn't make it to the anchorage after the second lock so stayed at a marina. The Pirate Marina was rough, redneck, remote, run down, but we liked it. Except for the 5 Looper boats that stayed here,  the rest of the boats that were docked did not look like they had left their slip in quite a while. Near here is the snag boat museum, so a few of us borrowed the courtesy van (quite scary) to go see it, but the beautiful antebellum museum and boat were closed on Sunday. The 108' US Snagboat Montgomery, built in 1926, was the last steam-powered stern wheeler to ply the inland waterways of the south. It kept the rivers clean for commercial traffic. Tomorrow a few of us head to an anchorage after locking through the Tom Bevill Dam.