top of page

Towboating: Do Not Try This At Home!

Blue skies, the sun shining down, birds singin’, just another lazy afternoon on the banks of the Tombigbee River. Or maybe not, as the towboat Cahaba squares off with the Rooster Bridge about 12 miles below Demopolis, AL. with the river flooding hard (note bystander rockin’ the OG Bear Bryant hat).


towboat03

Ruh Roh, Raggy!!!!! (note that the bystanders have bailed)


towboat05

towboat07

I’ll be damned, up periscope!!! Boys, it’s time to change the tighty-whities!


towboat11

Go here to view the entire sequence of historic photos shot in 1979, along with the compelling, gut-wrenching (yet heartwarming) story of forbidden love between towboat and bridge. They illustrate why the Western Rivers deserve mucho respecto as an operating environment. It’s also why it takes a legal minimum of 90 days of training and observation on that route to get the WR endorsement on a towing license, compared to just 30 days on all of the others. Of course, there should have been another zero added on to the end of those numbers. But, what the hell, experience is overrated, right?

2 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Be Careful Out There

Putting to sea, in any craft and at any time, is inherently dangerous to some degree: we’re bipeds that can’t extract oxygen from the...

Comments


bottom of page