Flash Flood Terror

The past week has been full of lessons from the school of ‘hard knocks’.  Mistakes, on my part, have caused injuries and dangerous situations (one minor danger & one major danger).  The week started out wonderfully.  We were anchored in a lovely cove in Bay Springs Lake (our last anchorage before heading south).  We did have a night reserved at Bay Springs Marina on Oct 21, because our absentee ballots arrive too late for my son to forward them to our last marina stop...so we scheduled one more stop before getting back into the river system.  We planned to make the most of our last few days of ‘Lake Life’.

Our beautiful anchorage with very clear water.

One morning while I was making the bed, movement outside the porthole caught my eye.  I realized it was a deer swimming right past the boat, and asked Keith to run up to the pilot house to try to get a picture.  

The small deer exited the water, ran up the beach to the right and disappeared into the trees.  Keith came back down to tell me the deer made it across, and said that he heard dogs barking somewhere in the woods.  Interestingly, we had spoken with another couple anchored on the lake a few days prior, and they asked us if we had heard the dogs barking.  They said every time they heard dogs barking deer would run out of the woods, up the beach, and back into the woods.  At that time we had not heard or seen anything like that, but we surmised that must be what drove this deer into the water.  We both returned to our tasks and a few minutes later I heard Keith yell, “what are you idiots doing”... I asked, “what’s going on”

Keith informs me that two dogs are now swimming past the boat.  I run to the pilot house to put a little ‘voo-doo hex’ on them in hopes they don’t catch the deer.  Luckily, they exit the water, close to where the deer did, but they break left and run up the beach before disappearing into the woods.  We have no idea if the deer got away, and the strange part to this story is that we never saw or heard any signs of a human accompanying these dogs. Suspicious!

While cruising the lakes we have seen numerous spots, on our chart, that say ‘flooded timber’...naturally, we have tried to avoid those area.  On several occasions (usually when trying to enter an anchorage) we traveled through a ‘flooded timber’ area, and could clearly see the trees on the depth finder 10 feet below the boat (usually in 20-30 feet of water). If any tree top was less than 10 feet below the boat we would abort that anchorage. However, this was the first time we could actually see the timber!  Keep in mind the lake level is low in preparation for flood waters so under normal circumstances these trees would not be exposed, but they would be a few feet from the surface. 

We have read that during the process of building dams and flooding valleys, most areas were cleared of everything. However, there are pockets in all of the lakes where the trees were not removed.  If you are bringing a boat to any of these lakes, please be aware that areas exist where they seem to have ‘topped’ the trees, but not completely removed them. I thought this would be a great place for my final paddle board excursion.

Once I got closer I could see that there were many more trees still under the surface.  With the sun behind me, and fairly clear water, they were very easy to spot. I light breeze from behind helped to increase my speed as I slalomed through the cove working hard to avoid the trees.  It was great fun, but once I reached the end of the cove I realized a miscalculation...

When I turned around to head back out, this was my view of the water.  I could not see anything under the surface...ugh.  I decided to retreat in a zig zag pattern to avoid traveling directly into the glare of the sun, and without polarized glasses this was my best shot of seeing the trees.  Keep in mind that a paddle board is much like a skateboard in that the rider is only attached by the friction ones feet have with the surface of the board.  If the board suddenly stops...the rider keeps going!  My biggest concern was that the fin under my board would hit a tree and the board would stop sending me nosediving into the water. I cautiously maneuvered and just when I thought I was clear, it happened!  The board stopped, forcing me into a triple step, short hop, pirouette, and onto one knee, but I did NOT fall into the water...phew!  Only after recovery and reflection did I realize that as soon as I noticed an increased chance of danger (with the possibility of head trauma) I should have put my life jacket on...mistake #1.

Cruisers might need to make a little extra effort for simple things like voting, but it is doable.  While at the marina, we decided to take full advantage of the courtesy car and travel into town for stops at the post office, Walmart, and CVS.  We didn’t really need to reprovision, as it had only been two weeks since our last grocery trip, but since the opportunity presented itself we might as well restock and be covered for another month or two.  We stopped at CVS for flu shots and ended up receiving multiple vaccines (this was the first time we found everything we were interested in, in stock.)  I got my flu and shingles shots, and Keith got both plus pneumonia. 🤞 hopefully we are covered.  After returning from our shopping trip and putting away all perishables, I headed to the laundry room for several hours of fun (they only had 1 machine).  By the time the laundry was finished I felt terrible.  In the meantime, Keith had arrived to check on me, because he felt terrible too.  We believe the shingles vaccine is the one that kicked our butts.  The next morning (Oct. 22) we still weren’t feeling great, but planned to leave the marina and anchor right around the corner so we could have a day of recovery.   

At the last minute we thought about filling our water tanks at the marina.  We knew the river system we were about to enter was usually very muddy, and we won’t want to run our water maker in those conditions.  Keith took I final bag of trash down the dock while I watched the water, and did a quick little scrub on some of the deck. My plan was to be able to quickly rinse the deck once the tanks were full.  I went below to check on the water level in each tank (easily accomplished by lifting a floorboard at the bottom of the steps and looking at sight tubes.)  At last check it looked like I had time for about 5 more minutes of scrubbing, then I’ll check again.  As I saw Keith coming back down the pier I removed the hose, closed the intakes, and quickly hosed off the deck.  Perfect timing...let’s wrap everything up and go.  We left the marina and got re-anchored within 15 minutes (by this time it was 1:00).  I was at the helm so I closed down the fly bridge instruments and told Keith I was going to take a nap.

On my way down the stairs I saw the two bags of laundry that had only made it as far as the sofa the night before, and decided to take them below with me and put the clothes away before my nap.  I slung one bag over my shoulder and held the other in front so I could make it down the narrow steps. When my left foot came off the steps to hit the floor...there was no floor!  Mistake #2 (I never closed the floorboard)!!  Luckily, the opening is fairly small so my entire body couldn’t fall through, but my stop was still very painful.  My right knee slammed into the edge of the opening in front of me, and my tailbone caught the edge behind me.  Even though I have been known to complain about the size of the ‘fenders’ protecting my ‘stern’ in this instance that cushion paid off.  I probably would have needed a trip to the ER if my pelvis or tailbone took the direct hit.

At this point in the story my original plan was to insert a few cute pictures to lighten the mood, and end the blog there...but then October 24 happened...

On the 23rd of October we ‘officially’ started our journey south.  Even though we were both still feeling a little under the weather, it was a fabulous travel day.  We really had no idea where we would be anchoring for the night, because we were faced with many locks during this portion of the journey. It is impossible to predict how long it might take to get through a lock, but on this day we made it through a record 6 locks!!  At this point I had identified two possible anchorage choices.  We read reviews on Active Captain for both, one had comments of shoaling and shallow spots so we selected the second choice Tombigbee Canal Cut.  It had 20 glowing reviews, with words like peaceful, scenic, quiet, good holding, well protected, and beautiful.  Well that sounds perfect!  What a great day!

As we entered the cut I thought it felt a little eerie, because the water appeared to be dead still, to the point of stagnation.  However, at the same time we had to maneuver around several large floating trees to get into the river (I thought to myself, I wonder if those have been here since the last big flood, and just can’t get out because this water never moves.)  Once we rounded the bend it opened a little and looked like a great place to spend the night.  The river was pretty deep (25ft) but fairly narrow so we kept traveling in until we found a more shallow place and anchored in 15 ft of water.  We planned on possibly spending a few nights here since a cold front was forecast to come through overnight bringing some rain and cooler temperatures.

It was a beautiful evening in this quiet, scenic, well protected anchorage (with good holding...thank GOD!).  I heard the rain start around midnight, but went right back to sleep.  At 4:00 I woke up and headed to the restroom.  At that time I noticed the sound of water running past the hull.  It wasn’t a startling sound, just struck me as odd after the complete stillness I witnessed the night before, but I attributed it to the rain and attempted to go back to sleep.  However, over the next 30 minutes the sounds started to change. 

The water sounded like it was moving a little faster, and small objects started scraping past the boat.  At this point I started to think about a small trawler that we had traveled with all day, who ended up anchoring just upstream of us.  Just then I heard something scrape our anchor chain then...BOOM...BOOM...two huge collision against the hull.  Keith and I both spring out of bed and run up the steps.  I was thinking that we needed to fend off a boat that dragged anchor, but to my surprise I saw no boat.  In fact, we were still in our correct location and they were still where we last saw them.  Well, time to inspect with flashlights, and that is when we realized we were trapped in a flash flood.

Trees were being washed down the river and slamming into our boat.  At 4:30 it was still pitch dark so we could only see the situation within a few feet of the hull.  A large tree trunk was partially exposed at the stern of the boat, but the majority of the tree was stuck under the boat.  Keith used a boat hook to rock the tree up and down until it finally broke lose with another terrible sound.  The water was now churning past very quickly and the river was rising.

 Keith went below to see if he could turn the props...starboard-yes, port-no...crap!  Something was jammed in our port prop, which would drastically decrease our maneuverability if we only had one engine.  Thank goodness the anchor seemed to be holding.  For the next two hours we sat in the dark listening to large objects ram the boat.  We were in constant defensive mode, checking for damage and discussing plans for different scenarios (none of them good).  Keith has able to free the port prop by working the shaft back and forth from the engine room.  We just wished morning light would appear so we could see our surroundings...won’t that be better?

Guess what we learned...being able to see what was about to hit us was more stressful than the surprise bumps in the dark!  Keep in mind that trees are like icebergs.  You only see a tiny piece above the water, most of this tree is below the surface.  We also learned that trees that floated straight like an arrow, usually glanced off the hull and kept going...BUT trees like the one pictured above usually got stuck on something.  The tree in this picture is about 35 feet long, it extends from the root ball, on the left, to out of the picture frame, on the right. The trunk is just under the surface of the water, what you see here is the debris the trunk has collected during its journey.  

It is difficult to determine the speed with which the water is moving, in these pictures.  The surface of the water appeared fairly calm unless something on the bottom changes the direction of flow.  You will notice the boiling/swirling in the bottom right corner.  This disturbance was caused by underwater debris that was stuck on our anchor chain.

This picture is the water right off our starboard bow.  We believe the water was flowing at a speed of 6-10 mph, which doesn’t sound like much unless you are a stationary object being repeatedly struck by 500 lb trees moving at 10 mph. As debris collected on our anchor chain we get pushed toward the port side bank of the river. Luckily it was 23 feet deep just 10 feet from shore.  In the long run this turned out to be a blessing.  While the debris had our chain pinned to the bottom, it actually held us out of the main debris field in the center of the channel.  At least 30 large trees slipped past our starboard side and never touched us, but if we had been in the middle of the channel we would have been hit by most of them.

We fended off when it was possible, but relative comparison does a funny thing to people.  After a few hours of bombardment, we were laughing at trees like this coming our way when the day before we would have been horrified of this tree hit our boat.  This craziness continued for 6 hours before the debris field seemed to clear up.  We were hopeful that the worst was over and we could ‘stand down’ on immediate defense and start assessing our damage.  We thought we might need to launch the Whaler to be able to free our anchor from whatever was pinning the chain down...we were guessing it might be a Volkswagen.

We radioed to check on Kedge (the boat anchored upstream from us) and they had a 35 foot tree snagging their anchor line (this is the Kedge tree).  We told them that once the current calmed down we could use the Whaler to help them.  During our conversation they pointed out that they thought one of the dams upstream dumped water into this river.  I had been studying the chart and kicking myself for anchoring in a narrow river with such a large drainage area.  If this had been on the east coast, I never would have anchored here!  Being aware of massive tidal flows, I always checked the drainage area before selecting an anchorage, but since their were no tidal flows here I let my guard down...MISTAKE #3!!!

This screen shot shows the boat anchored in the green circle at the bottom.  The red line shows our route, with Amory lake and lock/dam north of our location, and Wilkins lake and lock/dam further north in the upper right hand corner of this picture.  Wilkins is the dam, about 15 miles away, with a spillway into the head of the river where we were anchored.  I decided that we really needed more information before we could finalize our plan, and I called the lock master, Joe, at Wilkins Lock.  

I told Joe that I needed his opinion in order to make an informed decision.  After explaining our situation to Joe (who was very concerned for our safety) I asked if he thought the worst was over. He told me that the area had received 2+ inches of rain overnight, and that he currently had two floodgates open.  He also informed me that in his opinion, most of the water from this rain event had not yet made it to his pool, and he expected to be opening additional flood gates throughout the day...so...our situation would get much worse before it got better...YIKES!!

Time to develop our exit strategy.  We radioed Kedge to inform them of the new information. At this point we were all working to get out of there.  Keith and I discuss ideas to free the chain without fouling the props...tricky discussion, as well as emergency contingency plans...what should we do if...

As we were finalizing our plan we received a radio call from Kedge, “Right Hand, heads up...we just freed our anchor line and a 35 foot tree is coming your way”. 

That was Kedge’s tree.

Good! One boat free...one to go.  Just as Keith and I were finalizing our plan the hull was hit with another huge thump, and immediately started to spin around. Keith rushed to start the engines, but before he could put the boat in gear the anchor grabbed (or the slack from the chain was extended) and whipped the bow upstream again.  Strangely, we quickly drifted to the center of the channel. Whatever had been pinning our chain finally gave way. It was very thoughtful of our tree to wait until their tree passed before releasing us!  

We started the engines and pulled the anchor without any further problems.  Both boats made it out to the main channel, which was a mess, but clearly ALL of the debris came from this cutoff.  Both boats tucked into a little nook off the main channel (with no drainage area and no spillway) to give the river a chance to clear out before we proceed. Our propulsion and steering seemed to be fine, and we haven’t found any signs of damage.  However, we were planning to have the boat pulled, somewhere in FL, to tune the props, check shafts, and change strut bearings, so we will have an opportunity for a close inspection of the entire hull. I told Keith we might have been in better shape if he hadn’t been so thorough in scraping our protective layer of growth off the hull! 

And now that there is another named storm in the Gulf we will just stay put in Columbus, MS for a few days to see what Zeta plans to dish out.  We might decide to move north again, back to Bay Springs Lake, to mitigate the chance of being caught in flood waters on this ‘funnel neck’ part of the river system.

Final thoughts:  My brother happened to call me on the afternoon of the 24th, right after we anchored in our safe nook.  Of course I had to relay the story of our harrowing morning. His question, which I couldn’t answer at the time was, “where did all of those trees come from?”  It wasn’t until I was putting this blog post together that I realized that we were probably witnessing the final chapter in the story of ‘flooded timber’.  Those trees can’t stand forever, and when they are finally released from the bottom they probably end up jammed behind dams until flood waters wash them through the flood gates. Some might end up on shore for some time, allowing them to dry out enough to float (or partially float) during the next flood, but many remain waterlogged and continue their journey underwater.  I have no idea if this conclusion is true, but those trees looked very familiar...old, worn, drowned

Also, if this post is riddled with mistakes, please ignore them.  I have been standing (sitting is still painful...tailbone) at the pilot house table for hours trying to put this post together, and really don’t have the energy to proofread😏