Day 36 - black belt — Captain Father John

Miles cruised 98, fuel purchased 0 gallons, daily high temperature 72*F

Sunday night we ordered Dominos Pizza delivered to the marina. A real treat after not having had pizza for over a month. It was less that 20 minutes from the time we ordered until the delivery boy came to our dock.

We awoke to pouring rain. This was the first rain we experienced during the day in the first 35 days of our cruise. This rainstorm is remnants of hurricane Patricia that hit Mexico. Fortunately no very high winds only rain and a few wind gusts. The Loopers in the gulf region have been getting battered with wind gusts up to 60 mph and huge waves. We are fortunate to still be on the river.

While we were at the dock, I called Steve, the Demopolis lock master, at 7:45 am. He said it was not looking good. He had two up-bound and one down-bound commercial tows nearby. Steve told us to standby on VHF channel 14 and we should expect to hear from him in an hour regarding the lock schedule. At 8:45 am Steve called us on the radio and said the up-bound tow was a little slow going and he could lock us through in 15 minutes. Once again our ability to go fast paid off. We quickly cast of and were at the lock wall in 15 minutes. We locked through alone. It was 3 miles from the Demopolis Yacht Basin MM 216 to the Demoplis lock MM 213.

Dale will get an extra rum ration tonight. He had bollard boy duty and stood on deck in the pouring rain for 20 minutes as we locked through. It reminded him of racing on our sailboat Blue Heaven. Sailboats race in any weather including pouring rain.

We plan to cruise 98 miles today and spend the night at the legendary Bobby’s Fish Camp at MM 118. Just below Bobby’s Fish Camp is the Coffeeville Lock at MM 116. Once we transit the Coffeeville lock we will be in salt water and have tidal flows. That will be a whole new experience for us. We will spend one night at anchor near the confluence of the Alabama River at MM 52. The following day we will enter Mobile Bay and stay at Fairhope, Alabama for several days before starting our journey east on the Florida ICW. For insurance reasons we cannot enter the Gulf of Mexico until November 1 which is theoretically the end of hurricane season.

Since it is pouring rain we assumed correctly that there would be no fisherman on the river. However, we not expect to encounter eight tows that we had to pass up-bound and down-bound. This is a section of the Black Warrior River with many sharp bends. We had to slow down to pass the tows. The following tow boats answered our call to pass on the one or the two – Chris Pike, Roger F. Wicker, Jason Belcher, Joe Cain, Megan Parker and Sabine Pass. Only Creek did not answer our radio call. He was on a straight section of the river so I two whistled him. Chris Pike was entering a sharp bend and asked us to hold up until he straightened out so we could one whistle pass him. We passed a trawler and a sailboat named Mahayana at the same time we passed the down-bound Joe Cain. It was cozy. We approached a sharp turn and a tow named Black Belt appeared. All the other tows were identified by us well in advance by their AIS signal. Black Belt was not sending an AIS signal. I wondered where that name came from. I doubted it referred to karate.

The Black Belt is a region of the state of Alabama. The term originally referred to the region’s rich, black topsoil. The term took on an additional meaning in the 19th century, when the region was developed for cotton plantation agriculture, in which initially the workers were predominantly African-American slaves. After the American Civil War, many freedmen stayed in the area as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, continuing to comprise a majority of the population.

Map of Alabama’s Black Belt region. Counties highlighted in red are historically considered part of the Black Belt region. Counties highlighted in pink are sometimes considered part of the region.

We arrived at Bobby’s Fish Camp around 2:00 pm. Two other boats were tied to the 150 dock. I called ahead and asked the bubba if we could fuel up. He did everything to try to dissuade me from fueling up at this time. When we arrived we saw Celebration at the gas dock and another boat from Peoria. The Peoria boaters came to help us dock. It was a little breezy. We always prefer to hand off our spring line (center of the boat) first. These two “helpers” insisted on taking the bow line. Andy said next time that happens she will just walk away so they will have to take the spring line. We eventually got tied up.

This is a photo of George and Chuck from Peoria (dock line handlers) with Lora Jane Dahlberg Mcllwain the current owner of Bobby’s Fish Camp.

he bubba showed up and asked if wanted to fuel up? We said yes but Celebration is tied to the fuel dock and they are not moving. He was upset he had to come down to dock. I said we will fuel up if we can get to the fuel dock. He did not understand the concept and left. We will try again in the morning to fuel up after Celebration leaves. It turns out the bubba is Lora Jane’s husband.

Bobby’s Fish Camp – Silas, Alabama
Bobby’s Fish Camp is located at the old Bladon Springs landing on the Tombigbee River in the southeastern part of Choctaw County. Bobby’s Fish Camp has been in operation for over half a century and is one of the oldest restaurants in southwest Alabama. Bobby E. Dahlberg built and opened the restaurant in 1956 to serve river traffic. He also built rental cabins on the river in the early 1960’s. The customers of Bobby’s Fish Camp were primarily local folks. In 1985, the Tenn-Tom Waterway opened which resulted in a significant increase with yacht traffic on the Tombigbee River. The yacht marinas at Demopolis, AL and Mobile, AL were nearly 240 miles apart and many yachts could not travel this far without refueling. At the request of the Demopolis Yacht Basin, Bobby Dahlberg installed a fueling station on the river at his Fish Camp which was about midway between the Demopolis and Mobile marinas. Bobby’s Fish Camp became the smallest marina of the Tenn-Tom Marina Association. In the years since the opening of the Tenn-Tom, yachts from all over the world have visited Bobby’s with some making it a routine stop. Bobby’s Fish Camp is listed as one of the stops on the Great Loop cruising.

Bobby passed away in 2010 and his daughter Lora Jane Dahlberg Mcllwain runs the fish camp now. She told me her grandfather came to the U.S. from Sweden in 1856. He fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and bought 800 acres including the fish camp area after the war. Her grandfather grew cotton for many years. Eventually the US government took their best bottom land by eminent domain to build the Coffeville lock and dam. When Bobby came home from the Air Force after being in Japan in 1956 he started construction on the fish camp.

Remember ‘It was a professional who built the Titanic, It was an amateur who built Noah’s Ark
– Vanessa Linsley