Wednesday, June 3, 2009

George Andrews to Seminole

This was the third leg of the trip.

This is the part of the river where you get comfortable, pick a nice cruising speed, and enjoy the scenery. It's a pretty good stretch from Andrews to Seminole so relax and have fun.

The girls went below and started mixing drinks while Randy and I drove. Needless to say they were feeling pretty good by the time we arrived in Lake Seminole.

There was a lot to see on this leg of the trip. This is the part of the river that shows signs of life. There was the occasional house on the river with stretches of a few houses together in a subdivision. There were floating houses also. You couldn't really call them houseboats because they didn't have a motor on them. They were attached to pilings or anchored to the bottom of the river on cables. They ranged from very nice looking little houses to floating shacks that looked like they would be tool sheds on land.

We saw a couple of tug boats pushing barges up the river, one barge had a crane on it. There are also areas on the side of the river that barges can be parked in that are marked off on either end with piling drove into river bottom.

There was a factory on the side of the river of some kind, with a lot of train cars full of what ever it was that they were making. Debbie spotted an old train engine that was being used to push the box cars around and she made me circle back to get a picture, but unfortunately it went behind the box cars so we couldn't get a picture of it. I wish we could have as she is crazy about trains. We actually took a trip last Christmas and rode a train through the Smoky Mountains but that is a story of a different trip.

Anyway, after we had been riding for a while Randy got Dana to drive the boat while he started climbing out on the front. I was wondering what in the world he could be doing on the front while we were cruising down the river. That is when he walked out on the bow of the boat and stuck his arms out like the scene in Titanic. He just looked over at me and grinned so I got the camera and took a picture.

We rode a little more and my boat started sputtering. We decided that it had a little water in the tank so we stopped and tied off together and replaced the fuel filter. With the fuel filter replaced, it started running better and we were back underway again.

The girls being, shall I say, slightly intoxicated were not going to let Randy get away with being the only one on the front of the boat. They both had to get up there. They were having so much fun and were laughing so much that we started laughing too.

This was the first part of the river that we saw an alligator in. We were boating along and Debbie told me to look out for the log floating on the left. I looked and told her it wasn't a log but an alligator. She didn't believe me until we got up to it and it splashed and swam underwater. It was really a huge alligator. I would say about 12' long. I wouldn't want to be around if it was hungry.

We drove for a while and the river started widening again as we came into Lake Seminole. We were crossing Lake Seminole heading for Jim Woodruff Lock and Dam, the last dam on the Chattahoochee River. We called the lock operator at about 3:30 pm and he said that the lock was closed down for the day. We had wanted to go a little farther and anchor somewhere on the Inter Coastal Waterway(ICW) but since that wasn't the case we found a nice little island in Lake Seminole to anchor off at.

After we got anchored and tied the boats together, Randy and I started partaking in the celebrating that had been going on all day. We kicked back and relaxed and started blowing up floats for the girls because they wanted to swim. After the floats were blown up and the girls were in the water, we broke out the grills and started heating them up. It was about that time when Randy said "Let me see your binoculars" He looked through them and said "Yep, look over there" I looked at what appeared to be a stump in the water about 50-60 ft away from us. He handed me the binoculars and then I saw the eyes. There was an alligator, just floating right there. It was a smaller one, I'd say about 5-6 foot long. Needless to say the girls were in a hurry to get back on the boat when we pointed out that they were swimming with an alligator.

We turned up the stereos while I cooked marinated tuna steaks on the grill. I fixed seasoned rice and steamed green beans to go with it. After we ate, we lit the lanterns and turned on the anchor and cockpit lights and had a few drinks to celebrate our trip so far.

After a while of cocktails and music we turned off all the lights except the anchor lights and went below to get some sleep. The wind started picking up on this night of the trip. I was almost asleep when Randy said that we were moving because of the wind rocking the boat making it uncomfortable for the girls to sleep. I was sleeping like a baby being rocked, but I got up none the less and put on clothes. We fired up the boats and went to find somewhere a little more sheltered. We drove to the marina on the right side of the dam and tied off to the fuel docks. The marina was sheltered from the wind and the boats settled down. We went back down below and went back to sleep.

I woke up at daylight to take care of natures call. Randy and Robin were up right after me. We fixed breakfast and ate on the picninc table while we waited for the marina to open. Seminole is the point where you would need to fill up because there is no more gas avalible until Apalachicola. I would reccomend this marina. The man that owns it is vey friendly and even let us tie up to the fuel dock overnight for free. His isn't the mega marina so he could use the business. Stop by and say hi. At this point my boat held $126.50 of gas at $2.89 a gallon, so I burnt about 44 gallons to get from where we put in to Seminole

After breakfast we went through the lock, next stop the Gulf of Mexico

More pictures coming, keep following

2 comments:

  1. When given good sites and adequate resources with which to work, he could produce a very challenging lay out, equal to the best work of the day.

    seminole apparel

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't lose interest. Buyers pick up on this. Staying interested in keeping up with repairs and how the boat looks is extremely important. Yachts for sale in Cyprus

    ReplyDelete

We love to hear what you think about our trip so leave a comment if you want to. If you need more detailed info for your own trip, email me and I will respond.

Eddie