Cruisin' Through

Tombigbee Waterway and Tennessee River 2006

2009-10-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

What follows is a summary of all the emails we sent to family and friends during a trip we took three years ago. I wanted to include it here because it is a relatively complete record of the trip and might be useful to others contemplating the trip.

We left home on 29 September 2006 and traveled to Mobile and then up the almost 500 miles of the Tombigbee Waterway to where it intersects with the Tennessee River. There we turned east and ran another 400-plus miles up the Tennessee River. We retraced our steps and arrived home on November 8, 2006.

We are in a bit of a hurry to traverse the distance from home to the Tennessee River for a couple of reasons. One is that it will be getting too cold up there for us Florida people err long, and two we don’t want to miss fall foliage at its best.

We got underway about on schedule Saturday morning 30 September at 0820. We sailed without incident to an anchorage in Santa Rosa Sound 65 miles from home where we were met ashore by Trawlers and Trawlering email list members Larry and Joan Ropka. They will launch their five-year effort (a custom 42-foot trawler style boat in November, and we hope to return their delightful hospitality and dinner when they come our way. Weather this day was perfect, and Choctawhatchee bay

1 October 2006
This day found us underway westward in the GIWW (Gulf Intracoastal Waterway) at 0615 and moored at Dog River Marina by 1700 after about 81 miles of GIWW and Mobile Bay. Weather was not to warm, but running the boat from the lower station with the doors and windows open was cooler than the flying bridge - I guess there’s a lot more insulation from the sun down there.

2 October 2006
We were away from Dog River at 0715 and anchored in Three Rivers Lake off the Tom Bigbee River at 1700 after running about 75 miles. We have experienced an increasing head current as we have traveled farther upstream. It’s only about a knot now, but every little bit hurts. Traffic has been light with only four tows seen and a few bass boats, and nobody was going our way. We did see one sport fisher/cruiser pounding down the river near a dozen or so miles north of Mobile. At mile 14, we were held up about a half hour by a railroad swing bridge that had to let a train go by before he could open. Traffic coming back down will doubtless be heavier because by that time the hurricane clause in many boat insurance policies will no longer hold back those wishing to move down the rivers to the Gulf coast.

Three Rivers Lake (where I started this document) is about as isolated place as you can find east of the Mississippi. We are miles away from the nearest settlement (“town” might be a bit overstating the size of the dots on the state maps we carry). The silence we encountered when we shut down the engines was deafening. A couple of bass boats came roaring by about dusk on their way back to a landing several miles away on the main river. Then NOTHING. We had to break the silence with the generator to avoid the wet-sheet-no-sleep syndrome.

On 3 October we will pass by Jackson, AL, where Mary’s brother Donald works. There is no place there where a boat our size can moor or even safely anchor, but maybe he will be able to find his way to the river and wave.

A few miles beyond that, we will encounter our first (Mary’s first ever) lock at the Coffeeville Dam. I don’t expect any big problems and have adequate fenders to keep the turbulence from the water filling the chamber from bouncing us against the lock wall. I will be trying out a 2X4 by 12-foot long fender board over two of the four fenders we will deploy as a means to protecting the fenders themselves from rubbing on the walls.

We expect to get to Demopolis at mile 216 the day after tomorrow where we will remain in a marina for two days to see the sights and do a bit of boat work.

3 October 2006
As it turned out, we got to the Coffeeville lock and dam an hour after they closed it for "24 to 36 hours" for maintenance. It turned out there was a bit of welding required on one of the lock door hinges - can't have the door fall off while we are in there. So we got ourselves in between a couple of green channel markers and the shoreline and settled in. After a short while we were bored, and Mary wanted to talk to somebody besides me, but she couldn't because of poor cell phone coverage down in the river. Thus it was required that the dinghy be launched so we could go back downstream a half mile to a boat landing where we got to climb what seemed like a thousand foot hill for a half mile to a Coffeeville, Al where Mary was rewarded with a single dot on the Verizon cell phone on loan from her daughter Lynn.

One of the calls she made was to her brother Donald who works in Jackson, AL, a place we had passed by an hour or two earlier. He had meant to come wave at us as we went by (there being no suitable landing or pier for anything bigger than a bass boat there. Unfortunately, business got in his way causing him to miss us, but now he could redeem himself by coming up river to have diner with us. He gallantly offered to take us out to dinner, but leaving the dink and motor on a lonely, rocky shoreline while driving off 30-40 miles for dinner was not appealing. So he picked up some groceries in Jackson and waved to us from the boat landing for pickup.

As we were returning to the boat another "pleasure boat," as we're called on the rivers by the lockmasters and towboat operators, came up and decided to anchor behind us. It was a pair of brothers-in-law delivering a new-to-him 38-foot boat to Chattanooga for one of them. The boat was minimally equipped, and I just knew they were going to use a single anchor and end up in our "back pocket" before the night was over. Sure enough, they soon began to swing our way; so I motored on over and handed them our small "lunch hook," a 22-pound Danforth and 50 feet of half-inch nylon and chain rode. They were most grateful.

I got Donald back ashore about 2030. About 2100, we heard a loud whistle and looked out the door to find a tow boat crewman in a skiff inviting us to a sandbar where the crews of the two tow boats also awaiting lockage where having a bonfire to cook catfish and drink beer. Having just finished dinner, we gratefully declined, besides as it turned out the next day we didn't need a late night at all.

4 October 2006
At around 0800, I decided to accomplish a minor repair requiring my presence in the engine room where my vise is located. When I came up for air about 0830, Mary said there was somebody on the radio calling for the northbound pleasure boats to, "Get up here right now or be stuck behind these tows." I called the lock and found out sure enough, he was swinging the lower doors open hours ahead of schedule and wanting us two first because I guess he figured the tow boat crews would take longer to be ready because of the previous nights bacchanalia on the sandbar, which was probably visible from the lock office window.

I hollered at the other boat to get moving, and they quickly got moving and handed off our loaned gear as they went by. Being a bit heavier boat with stout ground tackle down and having only one male deckhand, we took a few more minutes to pile anchors and rode all over the deck, get life jackets on, get moving the mile upstream, while rigging four fenders and a fender board. It was also foggy, so Mary, unable to see the lock or dam, could only follow the other boat about a quarter mile ahead while staying mid-channel. The towering lock walls loomed out of the fog as I finished rigging the last fender and got the line ready to make up to the floating bollard in the lock wall.

Locking through after that was anti-climactic. All my plans for an orderly preparation as a means of averting any apprehension on Mary’s part about her first-ever locking experience went out the window. It all just happened, and it was fine.

As we were leaving the lock, I restarted the generator so Mary could recommence cooking breakfast, but I was not overly careful about load management. It was hot and muggy, and we’d run both air conditioners the night before. They came on, and so did a few other things plus Mary’s electric fry pan. Too much. As I got unscrambled out on deck after leaving the lock, I noticed that electrically we were kind of quiet. I looked at the console to see no generator light. Uh oh, now what? The generator’s diesel was cooking along just fine, but no juice. I decided we had carelessly overloaded the generator and that it would require cool-down and hopefully no repair before restarting. Since I know next to nothing about the generator’s electrical innards, I was hoping for a good out come after a couple hours of cooling. No such luck. Diesel ran, but no electricity - damn.

Later on, we were treated to a metal-on-metal screeching from the port shaft. Judicious use of throttle tended to make it go away, but this noise is getting more frequent in its appearance. Now we had two things to talk about at the Demopolis boatyard.

That night we needed to spend another night on the river at anchor because we simply couldn’t get to the Demoplolis Lock and the yacht basin upstream of it before about midnight, and you don’t run these rivers with their deadheads and other debris at night unless you have a death wish for your running gear. So we hung round outside on deck until it got cool enough inside to go to bed. Luckily it was a cool night.

5 October 2006
This day saw us make the fifty miles upstream to Demopolis lock where we managed to pass a couple of tows in time to be ushered right into the lock all by ourselves. Soon thereafter, we were moored in our slip, and I had a long talk with the yard owner after lunch at their restaurant.

He suggested, and I pretty much had already decided, that a new generator would e in order since 34-year old gennies don’t get good parts support. In fact, fifteen years is about the limit. He had nobody who could look into our genny’s guts. After some calls, he said the best he could do for a new installation was about two weeks but that he’d haul us out at 0830 the next morning to look at the shaft to see it that problem would also take log-lead parts. The boat, being wooden and unable to stand sitting ashore for weeks, would then go back in the water with a fixed shaft or status quo awaiting parts.

We decided to rent a car and have wheels to go home or wherever while things got sorted out. I went back to the boat and spent several hours looking into the generator, cleaning brushes and doing continuity checks and finally found where an output wire junction in the control box atop the machine had burned through. I remade the junction better than before, and viola, the generator is back in commission! We dodged that bullet for now.

6 October 2006
This morning, the boat is hauled for a port shafting inspection. So far, we have found a clogged water cooling/lubrication line to the shaft log. That could easily have been the problem. Won't really know until we have been underway a whole day with no recurrence of the squealing. Anyway, for now, it looks like we may get underway tomorrow or the next day - we have no schedule and are sticking to it.

7 Oct-2006
We have moved along another fifty miles or so. Red Barn restaurant in Demopolis - that's our tip for the day.

Had breakfast in town at the only (sorry) choice the farm House restaurant. Turned in rental car at the Ford dealership. Hit Wal-Mart where Mary is on a first name basis with the staff. Went by the library for on last computer download via wifi, and pulled out of dodge at 1100.

Went through Heflin lock at 1630 and anchored at mile 270, the Sumter Recreation Area run by the COE. It was a PERFECT Columbus Day weekend and NOBODY were camping or picnicking or whatever. The anchorage is only about 5-6 feet at entrance but plenty deep and roomy to swing at a single hook once in. Probably not much need for A/C from here on out.

Never saw the first barge or pleasure vessel larger than a bass boat the entire day. Where is everybody? Did we pick the perfect week to be headed north? Guess we'll have lots of company headed south with us next month.

Dredge "Kelly L" was working the Epes area just north of the bridge, and we had only 2 feet under us for a short distance where he allowed us to get by.

Saw more nasty looking deadheads this section than any other day - maybe 7 or 8 boat-killers.

Today, 8 October 2006, we arrived in Aberdeen, MS (Blue Bluff area) in good order. After an hour-long delay waiting our turn to lock through the Aberdeen Lock, we made our way about a mile upstream to a shallow (5-6 feet at normal pool, despite what the Meyers guide book says) channel leading about a half mile off the river channel to the bluff at mile 358 at a public area with a pier. No services, but no people either.

We did run into a several mile long section of river in the Columbus, MS area with a lot of people out enjoying the water. Other than that, all we saw were a few fishermen here and there and a few barges and several cruising boats including a big 70- or 80-foot "gold-plater." Before that area, we passed a very nice area above the Bevill lock with really nice riverfront homes..

Today's run of 90 miles was dictated by lock and marina placement. Once we decided that stopping at Columbus at 1330 was not in keeping with our desire to get to the top of this ditch, we were sort of eying Aberdeen Marina just above the lock of the same name as a final destination. Then we discovered the marina would be closed at 1800. Well, ok, we would be at Aberdeen Lock at 1700, and the previous two locks today had both been open and waiting for us for a 20-minute lock-through. Then Murphy got into the act and placed a towboat ahead of us at the Aberdeen lock. We exited it at 1800 after the aforementioned delay.

So I says to myself, "Self, why do you want to go tie up at a marina fuel dock (we had called, and they said to do that after hours) with maybe power and water, and maybe not, when there is a free pier across the river?" All that was going to happen at the marina was that we would tie up, probably not even need power, and pay somebody a buck or two a foot for the pleasure at 0600 the next morning when they came to work.

Besides, we have a working generator that might cost us 12 bucks in fuel to run, right. WRONG! We tied up, and I went to start the generator (you know, the one I repaired at Demopolis), and it said, "Unh, unh." Seems the fuel shut-off solenoid was stuttering and then closing off fuel after a brief run at start-up. An hour and a half later (geez, I hate hot engine rooms!) I discovered that replacing the solenoid's ancient 1.5-inch long grounding wire solved the issue.

We have a little less than a hundred miles and six locks to go to get to the top of the Tenn-Tom at the Tennessee River. If the lock gods are with us, that could happen tomorrow - or not.

Fog AFTER our sunup start was a big issue today, and we needed a bit of radar to get along. As long as we can see a few hundred feet of water to avoid deadheads, and the radar shows both banks and no approaching vessels, we can putt along at about five miles an hour, but we'd rather not. We use the Tenn-Tom raster scanned Corps of Engineers charts on the laptop connected to the GPS to keep us quickly informed of the waterway mileage, but it often shows us off to the side of the river on land, even after I changed the GPS datum to NAD 27 to match the charts. It is still better than having to rely solely on a book of charts awkwardly being flipped every couple of miles or so. I use the computer to show me the waterway outline and my eyes to keep us off the banks. Every so often I update the hard copy chart booklet position by flipping four or five pages to catch us up. That helps when the computer quits, which our ThinkPad did. We have three backup Toshibas, but it takes a minute of three to get reset, and the paper charts help to keep us from stopping all forward progress while resetting computers.

I have offered Mary the option of moving to Aberdeen Marina tomorrow and spending a couple of days looking around, but she may have the Tennessee River on her mind.

9 October 2006: A banner day as we covered 55 miles and went through the last six locks on the Tenn-Tom. We got underway at 0741 today, and per established routine, Mary fed me breakfast at the lower helm once we were clear of immediate navigation hazards at our mooring. Lunch is a similar affair as nothing is allowed to slow us down from our pounding 9.5 MPH pace except, fog, the occasional bass boat whose occupants we do not wish to wash up on the banks, and the locks.

Rigging CALYPSO with three of Taylor’s largest fenders along the flat portion of the hull (two of them covered by a 12-foot fender board) and a ball fender forward seems to be the right mix for us. As we approach the locks, Mary takes the helm while I kick the fenders over, retrieve our inflatable lifejackets, rig a 5/8-inch braided line to the amidships cleat, lay the emergency serrated-blade knife alongside the line, and power up the wireless microphone for the radio. Then we change places so I can lay the boat alongside the floating bollard at our chosen location along the lock chamber wall where Mary runs the line two times counterclockwise around the bollard and back to the cleat on CALYPSO. Then it is time to call the lock master and take the elevator up while we stand at opposite ends of the boat with our boat hooks’ butt ends pushed against the lock walls to keep the fenders from scraping too hard. The fender board takes most of the beating, but we must occasionally put all our weight on our boat hooks to help out as turbulence swishes around the boat.

0920 Enter Amory Lock – exit 0940
1030 Enter Wilkins Lock – exit 1048
1220 Enter Fulton Lock – exit 1240
1410 Enter Rankin Lock – exit 1430
1520 Enter Montgomery Lock at full speed to help out the lock master with timing – exit 1537
1610 Enter Whitten Lock – exit 1630
1645 Anchored.

We have passed some very fine looking waterfront neighborhoods and many more miles containing no habitation - we live in a truly vast country.

At mile 366, we passed the dredge Ingenuity, after seeing a flock of Canada geese paddling about near the shoreline.

Tonight we find ourselves in water dammed up by the Whitten Dam a mile behind us and the Pickwick Dam out on the Tennessee about forty miles north of us. We are in a cove in twenty feet of water swinging on our 60-pound plow anchor with a hundred feet of chain out. The only light is our own – we make the only sound (and yes, some of that is out “trusty” generator, which we seem to have beaten into submission). The water is billiard-table flat for lack of wind.

There are now only four locks on the Tennessee River between downtown Chattanooga and us. The biggest obstacle facing us is the damaged Wilson lock, the first one we encounter after turning east on the Tennessee. Reports we got before leaving home indicated that it could take days to get through it because they are using the auxiliary lock (a two-step lock) to move stuff through. Barge tows have to be broken up and the barges moved individually.

Today, we were only seriously held up at the Wilkins and Rankin locks. The dopey lock operator at Rankin somehow got the idea that a southbound sailboat was a lot closer and faster than was the case. The last lock was the Whitten lock which lifted us 84 feet for a total of 415 feet above sea level.

Tomorrow we will go to a marina at the confluence of the Tennessee River and the Tennesse-Tom Bigbee Waterway for a couple of days to sit out a frost-bearing cold front expected the day after tomorrow. While there, I will change the generator’s oil and raw water impeller earlier than scheduled because I would rather do those things in a cooled down engine room than under duress while anchored out and depending on the darned thing.

The only other engineering item of note was that the starboard engine Racor filter was drawing 2-plus inches of vacuum. It is only a 500-series while the port engine’s Racor is the larger 900-series. I could go a bit longer on the port filter, but I changed it tonight as a matter of good engineering practice.

Logistically, we are in good shape. We have 290 gallons of diesel aboard of the roughly 600 we left Panama City with 590 miles ago. We are running about 10-15% fresh water capacity daily and have refilled tanks in Mobile and Demoplolis. We have spent three nights in marinas so far.

10 October 2006
An eighty-mile day including topping up with 900 dollars worth of diesel at a marina at the juncture of the Tenn-Tom and the Tennessee. Lessee here, ten days at 90 bucks a day - good fun!
Tonight we are in Florence Harbor Marina at the Alabama city of that name. We await the cold front. Then we will go face the damaged Wilson Lock system for the expected 3-4 hour wait to lock into Wilson Lake. They may kick us out of here tomorrow in the middle of the front. Oh well..

After an early morning departure from our snug cove north of the Whitten lock this AM, we transitted the Bay Springs Lake across the Natchez Trace and into a 25-mile long cut from the head waters of the Tom Bigbee River into the yellow Creek area of the Tennessee. As with every body of impounded water we have traversed, these areas were each different and interesting. As we neared the Tennessee proper, we started to see hills, and the Pickwick Lake section started out as a large body of water reminiscent of out own West Bay in Panama City.

The sailing line on the chart is oddly very close to the southern shore in the first part of the river/lake that we transited. I guess the old riverbed was close under the cliffs there. Later on in our forty-mile run on the Tennesse this day, we started seeing more and more buoys and heeded the river guide warnings to heed the buoys. Increasing numbers of buoys are to a sailor as road construction barrels and warning signs are to a motorist on the highway - you start watching where you are going more carefully.

The size of the towboats is astounding on this river. You could stuff a half dozen of the size we see in Panama City into these behemoths. They shoulder a lot of barges too.

We lost about 2 MPH to tail water currents from the Wilson Dam starting about 7 miles downstream. Here we were making 9.78 MPH per GPS and just terrorizing the neighborhood when we hit this adverse current. It makes planning an arrival before the marina office shuts down a pain.

We took the clunker courtesy van to the store tonight, and Mary said she is NOT getting into that thing with me again - something about brakes and stoplights.... We are far safer afloat.

We hope to be in a marina by Saturday morning where we can receive a visit from sister Kathy - maybe in Huntsville.

Mary is sticking by her desire to get to Chattanooga ASAP (despite my whining about fuel conservation, engine wear, and my tired butt from sitting at the helm all day) so we can coast slowly home. Besides, the trees are juuuuust starting to turn.

11 October 2006
Today I actually swept fall-colored leaves off the boat blown onto us over the top of a lock.

The owner of a Krogen 39-foot trawler named Travelin Man approached me in Florence Harbor Marina last night about ganging up on the lock masters at the Wilson Lock (a 92-foot lift), which has been experiencing long delays in locking traffic through since its main chamber door was damaged in an accident in August. He felt that if we had several boats milling around, the lock masters would want to get us through faster than if he showed up all by himself.

Since we had originally planned to stay two nights in the marina to let a front blow through, we were not too sure about this idea, but a late weather report indicated relatively mild conditions for the frontal passage. We agreed to look at things in the morning.

Slept late today and found Tavelin Man had left at 0710. I called him on the radio at 0800 to find him three miles up river at the dam with instructions from the lock masters to wait three hours before they’d interrupt the painfully slow process of locking individual barges through the auxiliary lock. The auxiliary lock is a double lift deal with three gates, one at the bottom, one in the middle and another at the upper end.

When we got there at about 0930 there was a towboat pushing individual barges into the lower auxiliary. The water level in this chamber was then raised to a point were the barge could be winched into the upper chamber through the middle door. When that chamber’s water level was raised to the level of Wilson Lake behind the dam, the upstream door was opened, and another towboat would drag the barge out and stack it with others in a barge “fleeting” area awaiting make up into a larger tow to be moved on up river at a later time.

We found a convenient spot to hang out along the outer wall of the main chamber behind some construction barges working the repair job there. The lock master encouraged Travelin Man to contact the marina back downstream to see if they had more boats interested in locking through, and several more responded that they were on the way. By 1145, when we were ordered into the lock, we had five boats. We took the less turbulent forward most bollard on the left side of the chamber, and Travelin Man took the right. Since there are only three floating bollards to tie up to (they don’t let boats just swirl around in the turbulent waters while locking – you have to tie up to something), another boat came in between Travelin Man and us and tied off to Travelin Man. Two other boats were rafted together at the back end of the chamber.

We all had to move into the upper chamber, repeating the process of tying up, except I noted the back end bollard in the upper chamber was on the opposite wall from the lower chamber. What’s
up with that? Anyway, the aft two boats had to swap all there mooring gear around. We finally got loose from Wilson Lock at 1310 and ran 13 miles upstream to Wheeler Lock.
By now, we were starting to get about a 12-MPH breeze astern, and it was blowing right into the lock chamber. We had very little delay here as four boats were locked, each with its own bollard. Being the fastest boat (wow, fastest of four boats – that’s a change), we were there first and rigged for a port side moor to the forward bollard in the left front wall. So here I am plowing ahead down the chamber and angling to that bollard. Mary was out on deck, line in hand, ready to lasso the thing. Just as we pulled up alongside the bollard of choice, the lock aster called on the radio to say that we shouldn’t tie there because the bollard was inoperative. He wanted me to take another one a bit more forward he said was about twenty feet back from the front sill (a large green slimy concrete wall). I was doubtful since our amidship cleat is in the middle of a boat that is actually 46 feet in overall length. I eased up there anyway and decided he was wrong and that the bollard was maybe 15 feet from the sill.
By now the Travelin Man was edging along on his side of the chamber, and the wind was howling through trying to kick our stern out from the wall and ram our port bow into it. I was forced to back down the lock a ways to find a less desirable bollard while avoiding Travelin Man and staying as close to our side of the wall as possible without the rough waters bouncing us into it. Once tied up, rather than secure the mains, as I usually do in a lock, I left them port ahead and starboard backing to keep us flat on the wall. I decided that this lock master does not get a gold star today.
We called ahead to Bay Hill Marina, which seemed to be about the right distance along our track. The young lady there, being new in the employ of the marina, sounded very tentative but assured me she could see a vacant slip suitable for us. She said they’d be gone for the day by the time we arrived, but she gave me directions (which I confirmed by looking at diagram of the place in my cruising guide showing covered and uncovered slips) and that we could settle up tomorrow.
So here we come stumbling across the lake in beam seas rolling like a pair of drunken sailors. We popped into the marina though the narrow breakwater formed by some old barges and went from rough to smooth seas in a boat length. We wandered around in water about a foot under our keel looking for our slip only to discover that ALL slips are now covered and that letting down our mast would not even have been enough to allow us into one. Luckily, we found the end of one of the covered piers without a lager boat attached and tied up. We have wifi, power, and water – so all’s well.
Assuming the weather tomorrow is not too terrible, we will be on our way to Ditto Marina in Huntsville, AL, and the next day we will head for Scottsboro, AL, where Kathy and Bill may come to visit.

12 October 2006
Imagine this. We’re turning into Ditto Landing Marina near Huntsville, AL and talking to the dock master getting our transient berth assignment, when a hail comes over the radio from the owner of the boat Irish Ayes - a fellow who owes me dinner. I mean, how good am I that in the wilderness of this river I can manage to come upon a fellow bound in the opposite direction, several hundred miles from his home in Knoxville, TN who owes me. They were anchored in a cove six miles upstream and immediately decided to come down stream and moor in the marina with us.

We had never met face to face before, but Mike and Pat Sullivan proved the old truth about boat people being the best. We spent the afternoon comparing notes on river navigation and looking over each other’s boats. They have a gorgeous Gulf Star 44, which looks new even though it is 20 years old. We later shared a cab to the dinner Mike had long ago promised. We walked over to get a WalMart fix and then shared a cab “Home.”

Today’s run of 45 miles was no big deal. We left the end-tie we’d enjoyed the night before in Bay Hill Marina and motored on up the river past Brown’s Ferry nuclear plant and the industrial area around Decatur, AL. After that we enjoyed the wilderness of a wildlife refuge for the last 20 miles before Ditto Landing. There is little on the river in the way of civilization here since Huntsville is about fifteen miles north of the river.

We passed the Redstone Arsenal just before getting here, and we noted several large explosions as we got to Ditto Landing. The Army or NASA was probably blowing up something on the Arsenal reservation.

The river has narrowed considerably, and the current has picked up to about a mile to a mile and a half an hour against us.

We plan to serve up Belgian waffles to the Sullivans tomorrow before they depart downstream to eventually end up in the Florida Keys and we depart upstream for Goose Pond Marina about 45 miles away.

13 October 2006
Today was a 46-mile day and one (Guntersville) lock. The river continued to oppose us with a current of about a knot or so. Sometimes it seemed like we were standing still. It’s a mental thing to be sure, but what a relief it will be to let the main engines semi-idle downhill during our return. You give some and you get some in river travel, or put another way, some days you’re the jellyfish and others you are the propeller.

We only saw one barge tow today, and we met him on the inside of his turn at a bend of the river on “one whistle” (port side to port side, like you do on the highway). Everybody likes the smaller vessels to go around the inside of a barge tow’s turn because if the towboat ever “trips” (hitting his stern against the bank on the outside of the turn), his whole load of barges swings to the outside of the turn like a giant door squashing anything in the way.

We saw bald eagles and Canada geese today in the long, wild section before Guntersville dam. A number of pleasure craft of about our size were headed down stream flying the America’s Great Loop Cruising Association flag, obviously headed for their rendezvous at Joe Wheeler State Park.

After the dam, we were treated to a much wider section of the river and no current for a while. Here there were many nice homes on the riverbanks and many, many boathouses, prompting me to rename the area Boathouse Lake.

We still have buoys marking the main channel throughout most of our travel and indications on the charts of shallow waters outside the channel. With water as wide as this (often approaching a mile), you’d think one would be free to wander about willy-nilly, but tain’t so.

Eventually, we wandered in off the river at Goose Pond Resort Marina at Scottsboro , AL where the transient slips are mostly vacant. We found Frobenius here. The owners are also members of the boating email list I contribute to. They have been living aboard for five years cruising the waterways of America. We had a long talk exchanging river navigation information and boat maintenance tips.

Which brings up the damage port amidships closed chock (hawse to some). This is where we lead the line (the only line holding us the wall) from the amidships cleat to the floating bollards in the locks. I looked over the side at the outboard section of this item and found its flange-like section, which is screwed to the side of the boat with six bronze wood screws) pulling away from the wood. Mary said she remembered something cracking during that horrible mess in the Wheeler lock the other day – think I now know what it was.

Tonight I removed all the screws and hammered the chock loose from the hull. I drilled out the old ragged screw holes with a Forstner bit and pounded in 5/8-inch diameter teak plugs soaked in Epoxy. They were trimmed flat, and when I get some suitable screws tomorrow, I’ll screw them into the new wood making everything like new.

We plan to rent a car tomorrow and go 51 miles upstream to collect sister Kathy at Nickajack Resort and Marina (the old Hales Bar Marina) and bring her back to Scottsboro, AL so she can get underway with us and travel up river with us for the day on Sunday. We plan to get her to here car there in time for her to get home to the SW corner of North Carolina before dark.

15 October 2006
Having successfully collected sister Kathy 51 miles upstream at Hales Bar Marina with the Goose Pond courtesy car, we returned to Scottsboro where Mary rented a car so she and Kathy could wander the aisles of WalMart and the famous airline Unclaimed Baggage store while I attended to a generator sump and main engine injector pump oil changes.

We got underway at 0650 in some sea smoke fog, which got thicker once we got into the main river. After an hour of radar and fog horn routine, we were treated to a very clear day in crisp air with high in the 70s.

Kathy got her official “locking through pin” at Nickajack Dam and seemed to enjoy watching a heavily laden towboat exit the lock before we got in the only barge on the move we saw all day). We are now 634 feet above sea level, and the less dense fresh water has CALYPSO sitting down in the water right on the bottom of the boot top with no bottom paint showing at all.

After we passed through the lock, we encountered the trawler Hey Bubba heading the other direction. When we saw they were from Madisonville, LA, we called back to see if they knew Larry Brown and Matthew Seal. We got back an affirmative to both, and then we gossiped about both of them. Oh, the things we said!

We arrived at Hales Bar at 1430 and sent Kathy home to Hayesville, NC about 1530 where the transient slip finger peirs are about 20 feet long – what can they have been thinking making them so short?. About an hour later, the massive stern-wheeler Delta Queen cruised on by rolling the marina pretty well.

There is now nothing between Chattanooga and us but 32 miles of river water. Our plan is to go to Ross Landing beside the famous downtown aquarium and spend a few days. We may go up river a few more miles and lock through the Chickamauga Dam to run about 20 miles down the scenic Hiwasse River.

We have had no luck for days in finding a wifi connection, and we’ll just have to send all the messages accumulating in the outbox when we can.
16 October 2006
We arrived here at the public floating pier in Chattanooga, TN yesterday at 1310 EST in the rain. Rain was predicted to rain after 1300, but we had sprinkles all the way up from Hales Bar, and it got really wet last night and this AM.

We rented a car from Enterprise and proceeded to where else? – Walmart. Then it was lunch and a hunt for some engine oil and oil filters so I can change the three gallons of lube oil in each of the main engines before we start for home. Of course, the straight 30-weight oil I want is not to be found. The hunt continues.

It was raining when we finally got “home” after dark; so what did we decide to do – laundry. It was mutually agreed insanity, but the good thing is we didn’t have anything better going on, and now our day is free of such encumbrance. Since there is no laundry facility at the public pier, we trudged the 100 yards to the car with our heavy bags, soap, and reading material and drove off across the river to a likely looking laundromat. Then about 2100, we trudged back down the long ramps to the boat trying to keep our clean clothes protected from the constant rain. Mary says she isn’t doing laundry “in the rain” anymore.

Start for home did I say? Well, not so fast there, quick-draw. While Chattanooga was our stated goal as far as distance was concerned (884 statue miles so far), the pretty cruising areas above Chickamauga Dam beckon, and we may just spend a day or three up there after we depart Chattanooga. We don’t want to get ahead of either ourselves or the leaf change going home.

Our wooden boat leaks – from the top. It always has. Now, after years and years under cover drying out, the rains of Tennessee have found the vulnerable spots. What is surprising to me is that there are no more than the several we have found (some are old enemies) and that after 24 hours of rain have largely slowed as the wood swells to shut off the avenues of entry. I have fought manfully over the years to control the issue, sometimes with success, but leaks are difficult to find because they often manifest themselves far distant from the actual point of entry. The war continues – as soon as it dries up around here.

Our big plan tomorrow is to go to the famous aquarium right next door.

18 October 2006
Today, we got underway around noon and moved along about 41 miles along up river through the Chickamauga Lock into our last lake. We anchored at mile 2 in the Hiwassee River in a small cove surrounded by trees getting their fall foliage. The nearest road is at least a mile away. Great sunset.

Tomorrow, we will go to the end of navigation of the Hiwassee and then turn around to head toward home. At that point we will be 681.5 feet above sea level and 922 miles from home. The seventeen locks we must transit on the way back to sea level will all be the easier, less turbulent locking DOWN.

We had another frustrating attempt at sending out our emails from Outlook on the computer from the public library. We tried several ideas offered up by trawler list folks to no avail. We can receive email and conduct our banking activities, but sending out email requires that I use the cumbersome web-based Bellsouth email system.

The only operational item of note today was the apparent failure of the antenna connector on the back of the lower station GPS. I first noted the loss of GPS signal on the laptop running Coastal Explorer and then a beeping from the GPS itself with no signal level on any satellite. We were near the Sequoyah nuclear plant, which might lead one to believe the Government was involved in disturbing the GPS accuracy, but such was not the case.

I moved to the upper station on the flying bridge and energized that GPS/computer combination and found all conditions normal. Fiddling about with the antenna connector to the GPS display unit resulted in intermittent operation. I re-terminated the contact, and all seem well. While messing about with this, I hooked up the little Delou USB GPS antenna I bought to run with MS Streets and Trips in the car and tossed it out the center forward window to provide computer navigation at the lower station.

19 October 2006
We awoke in our snug little cove off the Hiwassee River this morning to find ourselves socked in with fog. We couldn’t even see to the end of the small embayment. The fog hung around all morning; so I changed the oil and filters in both main engines. That is about three gallons per engine. I have a small oil-changing pump installed in the engine room with permanent hosing attached to the drains of the generator and the mains; so changing oil is not too big a deal. I just pump it into a plastic gas “can” I have aboard for that purpose and then dump the new oil in the engine after giving it a new filter.

I looked all over the place in Chattanooga for Delo 400 oil for the anticipated oil change before we headed home, and finally resorted to asking the management firm in charge of the piers for help. Their maintenance man ordered me a case, and it was there the next morning before we got underway.

At around noon, Mary noticed the fog lifting a bit; so at 1315 we got underway in the rain and headed toward B&B Marina eleven miles distant at the 12.8-mile point on the Hiwassee River. Me thinks Mary likes marinas and some "civilization" over the wild and secluded anchorages I tend to like - we share and do both. We had planned to go to the head of navigation of this river at mile 20 or so, but we may just call this place our turn-around spot and point our bow toward home.

When we got here, they tried to place us in several different slips, including a covered one for which we lowered the mast. We hung up in each on an underwater bar connecting the outer ends of the finger piers. I guess this is common setup around here and suits the shallow draft river craft and large houseboats hereabouts, but a seagoing boat with a deep keel like ours will not go there.

The dock master finally had a boat moved so we could back into the last 30 feet of and end tie where there were no connecting bars. He said he’d never seen a boat hang up like that before – guess he sees few saltwater boats. The boat that was moved to make way for us was a runabout that had to be paddled because it apparently had a dead battery.

I was able to reach some shore power by hooking our two 30-Amp power cords together. That means we can only run one air-conditioner/heater, but the air is cool enough that we don’t need either heating or cooling. What we DO need is dehumidification. The rain is relentless, and the humidity is 110 percent. We are running the one air conditioner on cool to squeeze some of the moisture out of the air.

The small restaurant attached to the marina office/store is called the Paradise Point Bar and Grill, and we enjoyed a hearty meal there before retiring to the boat to watch some movies.

The marine repair shop across from the restaurant took the waste oil generated from my oil change of this morning.

The Thinkpad worked well today hooked up to the GPS with the serial plug. I changed its port setting to 4800 baud to match that of the GPS.

20 Oct 2006
The rains have stopped, and we slept in until 0830 today. We finally got underway from Paradise Point (B&B Marina) at mile 12.8 on the Hiwassee River a bit later on.

If it weren't for Thanksgiving...
Suffice it to say, there is an overwhelming requirement on the distaff side of our crew to return home this year. But it was actually her fault that we did not start for home today. As we were exiting the Hiwassee about 1130, Mary began reading about areas farther UPSTREAM. She decided that we really needed to go about 35 miles farther up the Tennessee River to get into Watts Bar Lake via the Watts Bar lock. Far be it from me to not be a bit flexible about extending the ride.

So, in keeping with "we don't have a plan and are sticking to it," the wheel went over right instead of left, and we arrived here at Spring City Resort and Marina (formerly Spring City Boat Dock) in picturesque Piney River at about 1700. The area with its fall colors and vertical relief reminds me very much of a road trip I once took myself on through Vermont in 1972.

Now we have transited 18 locks and are 741 feet above sea level and 950 miles from home. We will have easier locking and faster sailing (downstream) from here until Mobile. When we arrived in the cove where the marina is located, young Nathan, the dock master met us and directed us to a covered slip until I pointed out we had a mast up and would prefer an uncovered slip.

Nathan took us to the Piggly Wiggly in tiny Spring City for a quick shopping trip. I also got another gallon of lube oil at the local Napa store. Later we both had ribs at the marina associated with the marina.

I expect we may have less email contact than we have heretofore because we will travel until we need to stop due to approaching darkness, which place may or may not be near any civilization. I have been able to read email at intervals of several days, but because of technical errors, I have not been able to send all the time.

21 Oct 2006
Today we awoke to fairly dense fog and fogged up windows, on their inside surfaces – time to sleep in.

About 0830, I noted the fog rapidly clearing under a cloudless sky; so I took a quick walk up to the officer where wifi exists to get a last minute download of banking data and email.

Underway at 0900 headed downstream toward home. Since the Watts Bar lock is only about five miles from the marina, breakfast looked to be catch as catch can, but then we got the word we had hit the cycle wrong and would have to mark time. We did race tracks and a port mill (milling about in a circle to port) while Mary finished her morning breakfast routine, which involves coffee making and toast and whatever. That always makes her a happier camper. Me? I get served first with some cold gruel and toast while sitting at the helm.

The ride downward in the lock was sooo much easier than the more turbulent locking up. Per our usual practice, we took the most forward floating bollard. Instead of the usual loud cascade of water flowing through gaps in the door and hinge joints of the upstream lock door and thence over the higher, upstream sill, we were treated to the quieter end of the lock where we could easily converse from our respective stations on the bow and stern.

We rode the tail water flow for all it was worth up to 11.1 MPH until it gradually moderated where we were able to run a respectable 9.5 MPH at 1500-1600 RPM. That “tailwind” enabled us to arrive at Island Cove Marina (23 bucks a night) at 1630 after running around 55 miles.

With a bit of rain forecast late tonight and into the morning and a leak or two as yet unplugged, I elected to lower the mast and accept one of the 60-foot covered slips. I know, we are supposed to be able to handle a bit of rain. We can and have, but I’d like to get the cracks and crevasses dried out so I can apply the proper goop to permanently stop them.

We are amazed at the size of this marina and the facilities it boasts including a good restaurant, boatyard, well-stocked chandlery, and miles of huge covered slips. When we moored, Denny Gustafson of Temptress moored next door assisted us. His name was familiar to me from the Great Loop and trawler email lists. We have read each other’s emails over the years. That makes about five names from the Internet I have had the opportunity to put a face to this trip.

We thought of Wayne and Molly Wert when we saw a cruising boat go by named SeaLestial, theirs being the more conventionally spelled Celestial.

Tomorrow, we are going to get up some time before noon and decide whether or not to proceed to the next location some where down river.

22 October 2006
Today was our latest running day so far as we pulled into Hales Bar Marina (NOT Nickajack Resort/Marina as the Meyers Guide states) after dark. The setting sun on the water directly in front of us was VERY hard on the eyes. We zig-zagged down the river passes that presented this optical challenge in order to be able to see the water in front of us, and we were grateful for turns away from the setting sun. Then it got inky dark.

However, it was not one of our earlier starts. Anticipating a rainy morning, we sort of didn’t get up with the roosters. Mother Nature decided that it was going to be a nicer day and showed a little sunshine on Island Cove Marina about 9 AM.

So, we decided to get going, but not so fast says Denny Gustafson form next door. He’d seen a big barge tow go by a little earlier and knew it would be some hours before recreational craft could lock through as they broke that tow up and shoved it piecemeal through the smallish Chickamauga lock just a few miles down stream of us.

Eventually, around 1045 we got underway. While outbound in the marina channel, we got into a conversation with Oasis, a boat we’d sailed with into Chattanooga several days ago. During the conversation, we were informed that diesel at the marina just above the lock was $2.40/gallon. So we cruised slowly down the lake as I put up the mast while listening to the radio traffic about the lock. We ducked into the aforementioned marina for 190 gallons of fuel and now have no further need for refueling before we get back home.

While we were at the refueling stop, pausing to eat lunch, we talked with the folks on the Jolly Bee, an MT44 heading down to the Gulf Coast.

After a longish delay getting through the lock at about 1500 EST, we flew down the channel passing by Chattanooga in a trawler blur as we got a push from a favorable current, running a mile or two ahead of Jolly Bee. Realizing it was going to be dark by the time we got to Hales Bar, I called back to Jolly Bee to find out if they were OK with night operating and found that they have neither radar nor chart plotter. Neither of these is required, of course, but they seemed glad that we stopped at the turn into the marina and lead the way into the marina.

West of Chattanooga, we ran through the “Grand Canyon” of the Tennessee River for about 35 miles. The fall colors are not fully developed yet, but the setting sun lancing through the twisting passes we transited gave us some truly memorable scenes. We took pictures and video, but this was one of those times that you just had to be there to get the full impression. Mary has complained about a lack of exercise, but today she was on her feet running from port to starboard and back again as she took many feet of video.

Since leaving home on 30 September, we have traveled 1083 statute miles, burned 550 gallons of diesel fuel and transited 20 locks (18 up and 2 down). We have 841 miles to go to get home and 19 days by Mary’s calendar to do so.

Following more technical stuff applies to “boat people.” Everybody else, go back to what you were doing.

Considering the complexity of CALYPSO and her age of 34 years, faults thus far have been more nuisance than serious. We spent one night at anchor without a generator because of an overload causing the supply wires to fry and another hour on another night without it because of a worn solenoid wire. We had one clogged shaft log cooling line causing a shaft noise (solved), and one of our three fathometers quit (I think it’s the transducer). One of our three laptops will not accept GPS inputs via serial port connection for more than a couple of hours at a time, but since I only use one of our laptops at a time, it’s not much of an issue. As a work-around, I was able to use a small puck-like USB GPS antenna (came with my Microsoft Streets and Trips) directly to the faulty computer, and it worked adequately but did not have as good GPS positioning as the other computer running beside it hooked up the serial-ported boat’s GPS with the tall antenna.

If you depend on laptop chart plotting, my advice is do NOT leave home with less than two GPS units (the USB GPS puck can serve as a second) and at least two laptops. Some have said while on the rivers and the Tenn-Tom they prefer to simply flip the pages of the chart booklet and keep their place with a removable marker. To be sure, our laptop some times showed us on the banks of the Tenn-Tom, but we at least knew what mile mark we were on at all times. It was far simpler than having to put up with the booklet in your lap. If we had a computer problem, we quickly shifted to the cumbersome booklet mode.

On the Tennessee River proper with “real” raster charts instead of the Corps of Engineers (Tenn-Tom charts), we found the position indicated on the computer to be dead on, and we used it tonight in conjunction with the radar to get into this marina. I would not have wanted to be without either of those navigation instruments this night.

Use of a fender board over two big fenders plus another fender at each end of the boat is the way to go in locks. Our board is 12 feet long, and we place it and the 100-dollar fenders they protect so that the board spans the floating bollard slot in the lock wall. That means your amidships cleat is about in the middle of your board. 8 feet would be too short due to some fore and aft movement in the locks. We stand at either end of the boat with boat hooks to push off the lock wall if pressure gets to great on the fenders or fender boat. We have noted a tendency for the board to briefly get stuck when down-locking and rise up along the fender until we push off with a boat hook (easy when down-locking).

Our shore power setup is two 30-Amp 120 VAC cables, plus we carry a 50-Amp to twin 30-Amp splitter. This way, you can ensure you will always have power. We have had to spend only one night at any marina without both of our 30-Amp cables plugged in to either our splitter or to two 30-Amp plugs. On the one night in question, we had only a single, distant single 30-Amp power point, and we had to use our two cables plugged into each other to get power to the boat. We just didn’t run the second heat pump that night.

23 October 2006
Today started out quietly enough with plans to get underway for the 53-mile run to Goose Pond Marina. Due to our late arrival last night, I had not registered with the office or paid our dockage, but we wanted to get going before the office was due to open. I walked over to Jolly Bee when I saw the bees stirring there and announced my intention to take an envelope with my payment to the office and slip it under the door. Alan handed me their dockage and asked me to drop it off with mine.

As I walked down the pier, a long one, I saw a Grand Banks 32 getting underway. This 1972 woodie (like Calypso) turned out the be Help Me Rhonda with Wayne and (who else?) Rhonda aboard. I shouted something like, “Grand Banks RULE!” at them and got back the response that if we were downstream bound and didn’t want a long wait for a tow at the nearby Nickajack lock, we’d better get hopping. Didn’t question the data – just started moving quickly to avoid what had happened at the Chickamauga lock the day before.

I hot-footed it down to the office and slid the envelopes in the door and galloped on back to CALYPSO finding Tracy of the Jolly Bee walking down the pier toward the showers. I informed her of the impending lock wait, and she decided she didn’t need that shower so badly after all and began running back to her boat to inform Alan.

The other half of CALYPSO’s crew took the news solemnly, and like a good sailor in the face of adversity (that being no coffee), started doing the necessary things to get underway immediately. Generator start, shift to ship’s power, cut shore power and toss shore power cords aboard. Oops here comes Alan from Jolly Bee with the extra shore power cord we’d loaned them the night before. Toss that on the aft deck atop the others, take in bow and spring lines, grab stern line last and jump behind the helm and roar out of the marina in hot pursuit of Help me Rhonda with Jolly Bee right on our transom. Elapsed time – very few minutes and some seconds.

During the 45-minute run to the lock we caught up to Help Me Rhonda and had a conversation with the lockmaster on channel 14. Since he indicated that all was in readiness for us, the mad dash was scaled back as we slid in behind the slower 32-footer with the bees still close astern.

There were smallish amounts of fog about some times making the channel buoys a bit hard to see; so I warmed up the radar, which takes three minutes to be ready to transmit. As we came around the last bend of the river a mile or so from the lock, all we could see was a solid bank of fog up close to the lock side of the dam. I can only guess why it was so thick there – possible upwelling of the warmer water below to collide with the 40-degree air we were sailing through? Anyway it was THICK. I energize the radar and went to dead slow.

Help Me Rhonda started to veer off to starboard in a direction that looked to take them into a clearer patch of air but close to shallow waters and NOT toward the lock, which I was tracking on radar as well as on the computer chart-plotting program. I was certain we were doing ok. I didn’t want to insult anybody, but I finally called to the Help Me Rhonda and said that I was tracking the lock on two independent pieces of electronics and that he needed to come to port. He acknowledged, and then we entered the fog bank, and we lost visual on each other. A quick glance astern showed Jolly Bee (with neither radar nor electronic charting) grimly hanging on to our tail about 100 feet back.

We started to see the outer lock walls about the time we entered between them, and Help Me Rhonda was there ahead in the clear air inside the lock. Since we and Help Me Rhonda were both rigged to starboard, we took the last bollard on that side while they took the forward one. Jolly Bee passed us up and took the forward port bollard.

While we were sitting in the lock, it was revealed via radio chatter that CALYPSO was the only boat in there equipped with both electronic charting and radar and that we should lead out into the dense fog on the downstream side of the lock. So when the doors opened to another big cotton ball and the horn blew to clear the lock, we eased on ahead between the other two boats and radio announced to any oncoming towboat with enormous barges that we were coming out with our hands up.

It was not long before we were clear of the worst of the fog, and no tow was immediately in sight. We came across him about a mile or two below the dam in thinning fog.

The day was turning out to be beautiful, and we were making almost eleven MPH for a good part of the run until I lead the other two boats part way down the wrong side of an island before discovering my error. Some quick calculations showed we would have had 13 feet of water all the way through this area, but why tempt fate. I turned around, and so did everybody else.

We got to Goose Pond at 1330 to find a veritable cruiser fest going on and a LOT of wind. We were told that our mooring would be a port side-to landing, but when we rounded the corner to find several men standing on the pier to catch our lines, it was obvious that the dock master’s version of port side-to and mine were very different. Rather than back out of the tight corner we were in to re-rig lines and fenders, I spun the boat around with aggressive use of both throttles and rudders and backed into the double slip with a power catamaran occupying the other half of the slip.

All went ok, but with three healthy adult males pulling on the lines Mary handed them and a stiff breeze blowing, I did not have the control of the boat I wished. Mary and I rehashed the mistakes and the upshot was that when others are involved in the landing we will take the time to stand off the pier and explain to the folks ashore what we expect of them before they get their hands on our lines and that with me occupied with helm, clutches and throttles, Mary will be the enforcer of our desires about where our lines are placed. We also went over where the all important spring line goes when backing or heading into a slip.

And the highlight of the day? That would have to be our trip to Scottsboro’s famous Unclaimed Baggage Store in the marina courtesy kamakaze Explorer. I scored a 25 buck Verizon wireless card and some books.

Later on, I went over to Help Me Rhonda to help Wayne (he has owned the boat only a month) change his Ford-Lehman engine’s injector pump oil for the first time. We were talking on the radio about this every-50-hour requirement when I went part way down the wrong side of that island earlier in the day. Rhonda spent the time on CALYPSO with Mary.

Jolly Bee came into the marina and landed on an outer pier face for a few minutes to look around before going on alone for another 20 miles. Their schedule requires about 60 miles a day fro the next two days.

Tomorrow, we intend to move along through the rest of Guntersville Lake and into Wheeler Lake to end up at Ditto Landing Marina. Help Me Rhonda will dock there too. The run is about 45 miles. So yes, we are marina hopping for now, but for 25 bucks a night at these marinas, it’s hard to resist. If we anchored for the same amount of time as we moor at the marina tonight, we would burn about nine gallons of generator diesel to stay warm for a cost of around 22 dollars, not to mention the wear and tear costs to the generator.

While I was cooking our steaks on my Magma circular gas grill, I went into the cabin for a minute. When I went back out on deck, I was amazed and shocked to see a merry little fire enveloping the top of the regulator around the plastic knob used to adjust the flame. I blew it out a turned the knob to “off” for its last time ever. I will send the twenty-year-old regulator to Magma to let them examine it. It is probably not a good idea to keep such items so long.

24 October 2006
We arrived at Ditto landing near Huntsville, AL today at around 1500 after a 45-mile run including a half hour wait at Guntersville Lock because Jolly Bee had beaten us to the lock.

En route there, I noticed the refrigerator temperature was over fifty degrees – bad, and, yes, you really need to have a remote digital readout of this vital statistic on a boat. I could not get the reefer to run for more than a minute or so when I switched it from inverter to generator power or back again. I finally decided that the thermostat, on which I had been adjusting the cut-in and cut-off settings in an effort to keep the temperature at a proper level, was kaput. What to do? Break out the spare thermostat, of course.

I missed most of the river scenery from the lock to this marina because I was involved with replacing the thermostat on the refrigerator, which necessitated its removal from under the counter and dismantling of the freezer section. Who’d have thought that a darned thermostat would have failed, or for that matter, who’d think that a boater would happen to have a spare thermostat aboard. I got the spare several years ago when I got the idea that the original was not operating well. It has since been ok, but now it has finally called it quits.

Anyway, Mary did a fine job of navigating down the narrow sections of the river and avoiding big wakes for the fishermen we ran across while I lay on the cabin sole swearing at the refrigerator.

Help Me Rhonda followed us down river from Goose Pond, and when they got here I hopped aboard to help them moor. As they have not had the boat long, the name boards had not been repainted with the new name. However, I was able to make out the old name sunburned into the wood. I was amazed to see Idle Hour there. This was Roger Heath’s boat, and it had lain alongside Calypso at our pier in Southport when they visited from their home in Niceville several years ago.

Rhonda used her cell phones to call Roger at his new home up in Guntersville, and we all exchanged greetings.

We also “spoke” Harbor Reach, a boat name I recognized from the trawler list as they left the Guntersville Lock headed north. “Speaking” a vessel is a term from, as far as I know, the old days of sail when two whaling ships meeting half a world and many months or even several years away from home would stop and pass the news to each other and even trade articles.

Mary’s Aunt Virginia, who lives here in Huntsville, will visit us for breakfast tomorrow before we shove off for parts yet to be determined.

When we returned from the obligatory taxi trip to eat dinner and visit Wal-Mart, I decided to change the oil of the main engine transmissions. They were well overdue, and Wal-Mart had lots of tranny oil, so why not? Finished up about 2130. The only remaining routine maintenance item before we get home will be another 50-hour oil change on the main engine fuel injector pumps, but that’s ok, it means they are being used!

25 October 2006
We got up this morning to find the Help Me Rhonda gone on their last leg to home in Athens. AL.

Then we prepared our famous Belgian waffle mix (out of the box – if we told you which box, it would no longer be famous) for Mary’s Aunt Virginia and daughter Stephanie. Unfortunately, they had a tire casualty on the way to the marina and could not make it. We ate our waffles and departed the Ditto Landing Marina for General Joe Wheeler State Park, 65 miles distant. We were helped for a good portion of the trip by favorable currents and made about 10.8 MPH for a couple of hours.

At one point we got a call from a boat astern wanting to pass us on a “slow bell.” Unlike narrow channels where the nautical rules of the road require such requests, this is a courtesy in wider waters like we were in at the time, but also a safety feature when the passing vessel is large and fast because an unannounced wake from astern can be quite violent. This vessel turned out to be the 100-foot Freedom, a Hatteras out of Fort Lauderdale with a crew of three. Their wake at full throttle is about seven feet high. We were quite content to have their courtesy.

About 1400, we got a VHF radio call from Help Me Rhonda saying they had gotten home ok. Their homeport is about 10 miles before Wheeler Park. They may come over and visit us tomorrow, as may Mary’s aunt.

The run to Wheeler Park was quite uneventful overall. We sailed under ever more threatening skies, and the weather report called for rain for a day or so. So I talked Mary into holding up in the park for two days. When we got into the cove, we found nearly vacant transient piers. They are in excellent condition and offer us all the power we need and cable TV.

As soon as we got in and registered, I got busy putting up the canvas while Mary headed for the laundry. We have canvas that covers the fore deck as well as another on the stretches across the boat when laid over the boat boom. I added a couple of brass grommets to the latter piece of canvas to better hold it from flopping around in a wind. The last snaps were put in place as rain began to fall.

The lodge has a wood fire going, and Mary says she’d even give up cable TV to go sit by it.

The refrigerator ran well today – looks like the new thermostat did the trick. We still want to shift to a propane reefer.

26 October 2006
Mary’s Aunt Virginia came to visit with us today, and Wayne and Rhonda McManus of Help Me Rhonda will come over for lunch tomorrow.

It has been drizzling rain all day. More and heavier rain is expected tonight and into tomorrow morning. We will likely be here until Saturday morning because we cannot really get anywhere by darkness if we were to leave in the afternoon because of the probable delay at Wilson Lock. That lock is supposed to be repaired by 1 November.

We noticed that there are still several boats here from the America’s Great Loop Cruiser Association rendezvous held here a couple of weeks back.

One of the owners told me he was aware of 18 boats getting ready funnel down the Tenn-Tom, and that several would be leaving from this marina on Saturday when the weather clears. Unlike our trip upstream, I imagine we will have competition and the few marinas on the Tenn-Tom and the very few anchorages south of Demopolis. We’ll most likely have company in the locks too.

27 October 2006
Given the generally miserable forecast, we remained at our mooring at Wheeler Park all day with plans to leave Saturday, 28 October.

Our new acquaintances from Help Me Rhonda came over for lunch from their home in Athens, AL, just a few miles back up the river. Wayne is taking a USPS diesel maintenance course and wanted to talk about that and a heat exchanger problem he was having.

The rain stopped in the afternoon, and we had one whopper of a windstorm on the heels of the front as it moved through. The highest wind gust recorded in the area was 36 MPH during the night. We were most happy to sit it out safely moored alone in a double slip with lines out in all directions and with our bow into the wind.

28 October 2006
Underway at 0700-ish and through the Wheeler lock by 0815 with a big fast boat, Mimi, an express cruiser, Miss Liberty, and a Canadian trawler, Christine Marie.

Mimi flew on ahead for the fifteen-mile run to Wilson lock, and we heard the lockmaster there tell them via radio it would be a three-hour wait. At that point (about 0900), we all three pulled back the throttles and ambled on up to the lock an hour or so later where we tied up to a low wall outside the damaged main chamber while the tow boats continued in their agonizingly slow process of shoving one barge at a time through the double lift auxiliary lock.

While there at the wall, we all got out and walked around and talked to each other and had lunch before we were called into the lock at 1325. The Christine Marie and Calypso took the rear floating bollards starboard and port, respectively, and the smaller Miss Liberty tied up to the side of Mimi in the front of the chamber. Because the auxiliary locks only have one bollard in the downstream ends and they are on opposite sides of the two chambers, those two boats would be required to swap sides when they moved from the upper to the lower chamber.

While in the upper chamber, we were advised by the lockmaster that there was an upstream bound vessel coming up in the lower lock so that when the lower doors of our upper chamber opened for us to go into the lower chamber, there would be this other boat coming into our chamber as we exited. I had heard the exchange between this vessel and the lower chamber lockmaster, and the fellow sounded as if this were to be his first-ever locking. I was told that since this vessel was to lock through on the same side of the lock as we were tied to that we would have to maneuver Calypso over behind the Christine Marie as it moved forward. Then I would move back across the width of the lock to resume my same relative position in the lower chamber at the rear port bollard.

OK, fine. Then the doors opened and this large ungainly SeaRay with a rather delicate gray-haired woman on the bow with a boat hook (both wrong place to be and wrong weapon in hand) and an elderly gent driving up on the flying bridge came stumbling into our four large boats trying to go the other way. Seems nobody had thought to tell him to stay tied to his bollard until our forward two boats had moved on, making room for the last two of us to perform our dance to clear a path for him.

He ended up sort of cockeyed in the chamber not too far off our bow. We had no place to go until Christine Marie beside us moved ahead so we could move over astern of them and let this poor guy have his spot. Christine Marie was a bit reluctant to move ahead with this bull in a china shop in front of him; so for a couple of minutes, it was deadlock. Finally the Canadians moved ahead, and we cast off and followed on their side of the lock. Mary said the poor woman on the SeaRay looked over at her, standing calmly on our port side deck with a ball fender in her hand in case the SeaRay took a swipe at us, and said in a desperate tone, “This is NOT fun!” Mary also said she heard a loud crack as the guy managed to slam the stern of the SeaRay into the concrete lock wall as we cleared him.

All was not perfect in the down-locking group as Miss Liberty decided to tie to the rear starboard bollard in the lower chamber rather than move on up and retie to the Mimi. This move now halted the Christine Marie and us for a minute or so, but at least the SeaRay had bumbled on by us by this time. Miss Liberty was finally persuaded to get up to his proper spot.

We finally exited the lower auxiliary chamber at 1420 and bypassed Florence Harbor Marina in favor of making some miles down stream before sunset. We plodded along making 10.9 and then 9.7 MPH at 1600 RPM as the river widened downstream of the Wilson Dam and we encountered 12 MPH head winds. We ended up at Ross Branch at mile 229.8 on the left descending bank of the Tennessee just before dark having made 45 miles today. This is a nice uninhabited cove about big enough for several boats to swing at anchor, but we had it to ourselves.

We have about an hour and forty minutes left on the Tennessee River tomorrow morning before turning southward on the 450-mile long Tennessee-Tom Bigbee waterway.

29 October 2006
Most every morning since we have been north of Mobile we wake up with the inside of the windshield fogged up with condensation. I have a small portable fan I use to blow air over it after I wipe some of the moisture away, but it’s pretty persistent. I am thinking RainX Anti-fog solution might help. Just one of the perils of Fall cruising.

Foggy at sunrise this morning; so we waited a bit to get underway and had breakfast at anchor.

We finally got moving at 0710 as soon as I could see one of the two rock piles we went between to get into the anchorage. The fog quickly dissipated once we were on the river proper, and a really nice looking day started to develop as we left the Tennessee River and began the run down the Tenn-Tom.

As we exited the Tennessee, we noted another pair of cruisers about a mile downstream heading toward the Tenn-Tom. They remained well astern of us all day and left the waterway at the first marina just before the first lock on the waterway, the Whitten Lock, 38 miles from the Tennessee. We also heard the Miss Liberty a few miles ahead of us arranging dockage there for the night.

Our plan was to try to get to Midway Marina a mere sixteen miles below the Whitten Lock. The catch was we had two other locks to get through in those sixteen miles. With a projected arrival of 1300 at the Whitten Lock, this seemed a doable plan.

As we came around one of the last turns in the waterway in Bay Springs Lake six miles from Whitten Lock, we saw our worst dream come true, a commercial tow chugging slowly under a big cloud of diesel smoke in the same direction as we were traveling. This tow consisted of a smallish traditional tugboat pushing a narrow barge, which was connected to a dredge and two small tender vessels. The tug was really a ratty looking mess (built in 1928, as it turned out), and the whole impression was one of a floating tenement. I knew the tug was old when I saw the rivets holding his hull plates to the framing.

Could we overtake him in time to get to and through the lock? We tried with throttles set to max cruise, but when we arrived at the lock well ahead of the tow the lockmaster had just started locking down a boat, and told us that he had called on channel 16 requesting that anybody wanting to lock down to contact him. In other words, he would have waited for us had we called back, but all we had heard was some garbled communications between the Miss Liberty and him. We assumed he had thought Miss Liberty was approaching for lockage rather than getting ready to turn into the marina. That missed opportunity cost us at least an hour. That smudge was still in sight astern, and the lockmaster was talking trash about the dredge having precedence. However, he turned out to be a good guy when he asked the tow if the two go-fast boats waiting around the lock and we could go in the chamber and lock down with him.

When we bailed out of the lock, we had about five miles to go to get to the Montgomery lock, and the go-fasts blew by us while we in turn left the plodding tow/dredge well astern. I called the lock and made the lockmaster aware of the two fast boats and us and the relative speed we were making ahead of the tug. He told the first go-fast that arrived that he would possibly have to wait for the tow but that he was refilling the chamber from an earlier locking down operation.

The next thing we heard on the radio was that the lock was ready for a down locking and that the two go-fast boats would get a pass down stream. Had he held the lock open another fifteen minutes, we would have gotten in too. As it turned out, we had to again wait for the tow to slowly approach and get settled into the lock before we were allowed in. This lost us another hour and meant we would have to choose between anchoring for the night in one of the less than desirable spots in this area of the waterway or continue on to Midway Marina in the gathering darkness.

This time out of the gate we had about eight miles between locks and determined to out-distance the tow sufficiently that the lockmaster at the Rankin Lock would have no excuse to hold us up for the tow. If this happened, we expected to exit the Rankin Lock shortly after sunset and have to run the last four miles to Midway Marina in darkness – a sort of no-no due to issues of deadheads and general inability to accurately navigate the buoyed channel in the dark. I warmed up the radar.

Things at Rankin went just as we expected, and with radar and GPS-aided chart plotting, we safely arrived off Midway Marina in the dark. Mind you, that the chart-plotting computer does not give the accurate results on the Corps of Engineer raster-scanned charts we are used to with NOAA charts we use at home. I use the computer on the COE charts as reference to verify the next set of buoys on the radar while the radar helps to center the boat in the channel.

We contacted Midway Marina as their lights came into sight. Their three buoys are not charted, and we were faced with the requirement to pick our way into the marina with me conning the boat and Mary on the spotlight looking for the small buoys.

Luckily, the dock master was on the ball and told us exactly when to turn so that Mary’s light easily picked out the buoys which I was also able to verify on radar. We carried on into the dark marina through the buoys and turned sharply starboard on command from the dock master to see some folks waiting to take our lines from Mary as we backed into a slot on an end-tie.

So it was a sixty-mile day using every second of daylight and then some with a bit of bad lock luck and routine night navigation.

30 October 2006
Got underway at 0700 from Midway Marina today for a several-mile run to our first lock of the day, the Fulton Lock.

I had seen a fast cruiser headed on down the waterway toward the lock and from the radio chatter decided that it would be best to give it a half hour or so for him to get locked down before we got underway. That way the lockmaster could refill the chamber in time for our locking.

When I called the lock from a couple of miles out, the lockmaster gave us a scare by telling us that we might now have to wait on a towboat downstream. Luckily, that guy was not ready, and we breezed through the lock alone in about 20 minutes. One down and two to go – we had it in mind to get to Aberdeen Marina a modest 36 miles away.

As we approached our second lock (Wilkins), we saw three trawlers (AGLCA members, judging by their flags) anchored off to the side. One of them called the other two and suggested that now would be a good time to lock down since it was obvious we were going to do so. They fell in astern of us as we entered the lock and followed us the short distance to the Amory Lock to again experience a quick locking. This was in marked contrast to yesterday’s lock luck.

We arrived at the turn-off to Aberdeen Marina at noon and were told to follow the markers to the marina, which was out of sight behind trees. The trail of red and green PVC pipes with reflectors on them was serpentine to say the least and took us on a narrow path through cypress knees and other swamp-like flora.

After mooring, we got the courtesy car and ran into Aberdeen, a quaint town aging semi-gracefully north of a four-lane state highway. There were several anti-bellum plantation homes normally open to visitors, but none looked ready for business today. There was no WalMart in the area, so our visit to a local grocery store was relatively short.

After we got back, I decided to avail ourselves of the $2.15/gallon diesel we had been hearing about. We took on 190 gallons assuring us of 2/3-full tanks when we get home, 533 miles distant.

We have 140 miles to go to Demopolis Yacht Basin, which is the last piece of “boat civilization,” excepting a bare-bones fuel dock near the Coffeeville Dam, for 216 miles until Mobile. We will spend at least two nights at anchor in isolated places out of cell phone contact (Mary shudders) between Demopolis and Mobile.

In getting to Demopolis, we plan to bite off a fifty-mile chunk of the mileage tomorrow by moving down river through Aberdeen and Stennis locks to Marina Cove Marina. If we get into Marina Cove early enough, we can run over to the Corps of Engineers visitor center at the Bevill Lock and Dam right near the marina. Their main attraction is a preserved “snagboat” used many years ago to clear the waterway.

Then we hope to move down river 37 more miles through Bevill and Heflin locks to anchor at the last decent spot, Sumter Recreation Area, before the last 54 miles to Demopolis. It is hard to imagine, but there are NO anchorages, at least none I would sleep well in, anywhere on that 54-mile leg. In that area, the river consists of just two uninviting banks in a narrow, twisty riverbed.

Coincidences and happenstance meetings just keep on occurring. Mary was talking to a fellow boater, Ed Guillard, who helped us tie up at the fuel dock, and he knew my friend Stretch Morrill when they both lived in the New Orleans area. Ed has sent his wife off to see to her ill mother, and will move his 40-foot trawler (named “I © Lucy”) by himself through the waterway to Demopolis where he will pick up a friend as crew. He admitted to a bit of nervousness about being by himself, but since we are both leaving tomorrow morning southbound, he’ll have us for company for at least part of the trip.

31 October 2006
Another early day today, as I got up before dawn and called the nearby Aberdeen Lock to see what traffic was like. He reported that it was currently quiet but that a tow had tied off upstream, but he had not yet heard from it. I informed the Almost There, a fast boat that had arrived after dark and was moored to the fuel pier just in front of us.

Since Ed in the I © Lucy had said he was going to get moving at first light and was moored on the other side of the marina, I did not check with him about his plans. I just woke Mary up and said it was time to go. Since we are homeward bound, I think I detect a more accommodating attitude on her part about these early morning departures; bedsides, she is the one who set the “early” return date.

We were first underway at 0610 closely followed by the Almost There. The I © Lucy’s exhaust stacks were smoking as we went by her indicating Ed’s readiness for departure. All three boats were moored in the lock by 0635. Then we encountered a snag, literally.

We were first into the lock, and I warned the other boats about a deadhead about the size of a telephone pole in the water just at the upstream lock gate. One end was sunken and resting on the bottom, and only a few inches protruded above the water. As the gates swung shut, this snag got caught in between one door and the sill. The lockmaster spent about 20 minutes swinging the doors together and individually open and almost closed to try to “swish” this thing out of the way. “Swish” is a fast-sounding word for what was happening, as the massive doors don’t really move too fast. Eventually he managed to get the doors clear, and we were on our way.

At the Stennis Lock, I chatted on the radio with the lockmaster who told me that heavy rains a year ago had clogged the channel and lock with debris causing a four-day closure. We had the unique experience of locking down with a Corps of Engineers airboat at this lock. I had never seen one with counter-rotating propellers before.

We slowed today’s pace a bit to a speed at which the I © Lucy could keep pace with us throughout the fifty-mile run. At the end of our run, he opted to go through the Bevill Lock and anchor someplace downstream while we turned into Marina Cove Marina just above the dam.

Our Tenn-Tom marinas have been progressively smaller as we have moved south. Midway was a medium sized place run with a profession air about it. Aberdeen was quite a bit smaller with limited transient spots along a wall. The “office” was the checkout counter in the gas station convenience store, which happened to have the fuel dock out the “back” door, and I think the girl at the counter was answering the marine radio too. Marina Cove is a ramshackle place with one OK floating pier and a dock master who does not leave the office but rather gives mooring instructions from the VERY ramshackle affair ashore on a bluff that passes for an office. Other boater took our lines for us.

When the other transients took the courtesy car before we could get our hands on it to see the Corps of Engineers visitor center a mile or so away, a brown-as-a-nut little old man named Buddy sitting on a four-wheeler at the end of the pier (a first for me to see such a contraption on a pier) offered us his Nissan pickup to drive so we could get over to see the place before it closed.

The visitor center is a 1985-built anti-bellum like structure with influence from three mansions in the area pictured inside. There were displays of regional wildlife, the lock system, and an observation cupola in the upper levels. The big attraction for me was the Montgomery, a 1926-built, steam-powered sternwheeler with a large boom used by the Corps of Engineers to clear the rivers until 1982. It has been moved ashore, all 400-plus tons and 178-feet of it, and visitors are welcomed to wander about it.

We returned Buddy’s cigarette-smelling truck to him and then took the now-returned courtesy car to Aliceville eleven miles away for a grocery run and dinner at the Plantation House Restaurant.

Upon our return, and while I was changing injector pump oil, we were invited aboard Sybaris, a 1980-built 49-foot Grand Banks. Our boats look alike from a distance, but a GB49 is just an order of magnitude larger than a 42-footer like ours. The other transients, two transplanted New Zealanders from Canada and their two friends from New Zealand on a 28-foot Carver express cruiser, were already aboard Sybaris.

For Wayne Flatt – when I told Jim what I had been doing in the engine room, he related that when he finally questioned whether or not he needed to be replacing injector pump oil every fifty hours in his Lehman 120s, they had 1200 hours on them. If I were to try a stunt like that, I’d have two molten, smoking hunks of metal on my hands. New, low-sulfur diesel may take a toll on these uninformed types in the future.

We transients all have a similar plan about the trip to Demopolis, namely anchoring at or near Sumter Recreation Area tomorrow night and then making the long run to Demopolis during daylight the next day. Sybaris with her 5.5-foot draft may not be able to get into Sumter, but I told Jim and Bobbie, the owners, I would be glad to sound it with my lead line on the way in.

Trick or Treat, y’all.

Mispellers untie.

1 November 2006
The three southbound transient boats in the marina all got underway this morning at 0810 at the urging of the lockmaster at the nearby Bevill Lock. It seems he had n opening between commercial traffic and wanted to get us through. This was not far from our planned underway time of 0830. We were joined by four other vessels, including a 100-foot yacht moored to the floating bollard behind us.

The other boats, mostly mast-less sailboats from northern states and Canada, were left well behind.

Upon exiting the lock, we quickly sorted out by cruising speed/ego. The big boat moved on ahead and was soon out of sight while we pushed the throttles a bit harder than normal to keep pace with the 49-foot Grand Banks, Sybaris. We were pretty certain that the forty-mile run to the Heflin Lock would give the big guy time to get through and allow plenty of time for the Sybaris and us (at 10.3 MPH) to catch the next down cycle. Ourt plan (you know, the one we don’t have and aren’t sticking to) changed on the way down river from anchoring above Heflin Lock in a nice little cove to anchoring just down stream of the dam in the canal leading up to the flood gates on the dam.

Of course, any plan one makes to do with locking has maybe a 50% chance of success, which claim was proven as we encountered a towboat pushing a bunch of heavily laden coal barges about ten miles north of the lock. About the time we worked our way past the tow, we were informed by the lockmaster at Heflin that they were holding pleasure boat traffic until after the tow locked through. As he was only making about four MPH, we knew we were in for a long wait.

Both Sybaris and Calypso immediately slowed the pace to slowly cruise along toward the lock where we would have to step aside and watch the plodding tow come through. We hoped there would be no northbound tow to really foul up the works. When we rounded the last bend in the river above the lock, there sat the 100-footer having been held up by an earlier southbound tow.

We all milled about for a while all the time looking upstream for the tow. There were snippets of information about the tow some of which referred to his “getting underway again” which would lead one the think he must have pulled over for some reason after we passed him. Anyway, the lockmaster was finally persuaded to lock us down.

There were several boats that hung back a mile or two upstream, not wanting to get into a closer quarters nearer the lock. The four of us hanging around up close got in and through. It was several hours later that the sailboats we had locked with at the beginning of the day and several others came straggling into the anchorage with us. Because this is the only place between Heflin Dam and Demopolis (fifty miles away) to semi-safely anchor, one pretty much has to use it when coming through the lock late in the day. We now have nine boats scattered about here. As the motor-sailor Second Choice came slowly by with what looked to be a husband and wife team at the controls, I asked, “OK, what was the first choice?” They quickly pointed at each other.

With this anchorage being at the end of the dam’s spillway, the bottom is pretty well scoured, and both Sybaris and we had our first attempted anchoring result in dragging anchors. We saw Sybaris hoist a rather large chunk of shale on hers. We tried a Fortress anchor with 20 feet of chain and a goodly amount of nylon rode the first time and a large plow on all chain on the second, successful attempt. The dam has also informed us at about 1800 that the spillway gates have been opened some more to account for increased lake level above the dam as a result of a rainstorm that hit us as the last boats were anchoring.

Well, it was a successful anchoring for about seven hours. Just as I finished reassuring myself that all was well in the anchor department and was headed below to bed in my bathrobe, the anchor drag alarm on the GPS went off. I had set it for 0.02 mile because we were sitting relatively still in the strong current and being pushed back and forth a little across the current flow by a cross wind coming over the trees.

I grabbed the spotlight and illuminated the riverbank (solid rock) about 50 feet away, and sure enough we were moving downstream toward a big power catamaran anchored a hundred yards of less astern. I immediately started the main engines and clutched in ahead. Mary was quickly out of bed and next to me in her PJs.

It was pitch black along the banks and we were yawing left and right across the current as I tried to take the strain of the anchor chain with one engine and then the other in the narrow riverbed. My immediate goals were (1 to not drift into the boats astern, (2 not to hit a river bank, and (3 not to get too excited and overrun our anchor chain and tangle the propellers, which would have made failure to reach goals (1 and (2 inevitable.

I needed radar and chart plotter assisted navigation NOW, but they were off and would take some minutes to warm up and come online. I desperately needed to get that anchor in so I could maneuver freely – I was going to leave the anchorage rather than sit uneasily all night wondering when the anchor would drag again.

Mary got our communication headsets and my trousers and shoes (I was not going down without a fight and certainly not improperly attired). Now we were ready to do business, and Mary took the engine controls while I went forward to the anchor windlass with spotlight in hand. Keeping a wary eye on the closest riverbank to judge our position and movement, I had Mary clutch ahead as I cranked the anchor in. It had apparently become lodged in some crevice again, but I was determined to get it in and leave the anchorage. It took some minutes of tough negotiation with the river bottom.

After getting the anchor loose from the bottom, we were rapidly going to be pushed down onto the boats astern if we didn’t get control of the boat. We switched places as soon as the anchor was up, and I twisted the boat rapidly to head downstream while Mary played the searchlight back and forth between the riverbank and the boats downstream.

Not having had time to this point to think about turning on the radio to announce our problem to the other boats, we noticed heads popping up on spotlighted boats looking toward this million candle power light bearing down on them. I finally radioed to anybody listening that we were under control and exiting the anchorage. We wove our wave through the anchorage toward the main river and paused to get the radar and chart plotter adjusted before heading on down the river in the dark – not a pleasant option since somebody was going to have to control the spotlight to watch for deadheads while the other person in the crew made sure we did not hit the river banks or approaching towboats.

About this time we got a well-meaning but misguided offer to hang off the stern of a Canadian Bayliner. I politely, I hope, declined not having the time to explain that our 40,000-pound boat probably weighs twice what the Bayliner weighs and that we would likely pull them loose and have two boats tangled up and drifting.

As we entered the main river, I looked upstream at Heflin lock about a hundred yards away. The downstream doors were open, and the “light was on.” I called the lockmaster and made him aware of our predicament and asked if we could tie off in the lock entrance where there is zero current, by the way. He assented to our request, and I quickly rigged our fenders and amidships mooring line while Mary kept us in the middle of the towering lock against the efforts of buffeting winds to push us into the concrete walls.

2 November 2006
This day begins promptly at 00:00:01 because we, well one of us anyway, are awake. Why you may ask? Well because we have been hanging by our amidships cleat to the lower guide wall of the Heflin Lock on a windy, chilly, and misty night.

It is calmer here than where we were before our anchor dragged some hours ago, but instead of an anchor and chain we now depend upon one 5/8-inch line dropped over a two-inch thick L-shaped piece of steel in a recess in a concrete wall towering over us.

After we were comfortably secured to the wall, the lockmaster informed us that a northbound tow would be coming into the lock about 0200 and that we would have to get underway and stand clear while he moved in and locked up. He also called to any boats anchored in the old riverbed we had just exited that the dam operators were again increasing the water flow. We hoped the other boats’ anchors would hold OK.

As the eerie glow of the approaching towboat’s high-powered spotlights bored through the blackness downstream (one of those you-had-to-be-there experiences), we started the engines and backed away from our little piece of security moving into the dark and fast-flowing water of the old riverbed just downstream of the lock. There we backed and filled for two hours with our nose into the current as not one, but two towboats lined up and moved into the lock. Mary caught a lot of the action on video – a sight few are ever going to see from a location and under the conditions we saw it.

As soon as the second tow moved into the lock and had the gates closed behind it (about 0430), we moved back to our friendly pin in the wall for an hour before getting underway with the first hint of false dawn at 0530 to head south toward Demopolis. Mary heard the engines start and meant to get up, but it was 0715 when she showed up at the lower station helm. Too much excitement the night before, I guess.

Our run to the south was greatly aided by all that water being released by Heflin Dam – we made up to 11.5 MPH in some stretches of the river. I caught a nap for an hour or so while Mary took her turn conning the boat. We arrived at Demopolis at 1015 after a 50-mile transit.

3 November 2006
Today we saw a couple of firsts - our first 100-mile day and the first time a lockmaster ever started us moving up or down in a lock and then reversed the direction.

Planning a possible long day or just wanting to be the first boat into the only anchorage in a nearly 100-mile stretch of waterway (a one-boat anchorage), we were moving out of our slip at Demopolis Yacht Basin, before dawn. Mary got to learn how to steer the boat down a narrow waterway using radar to stay in the middle while I finished rigging fenders for the Demopolis Lock, just a couple of miles downstream.

As we moved toward the lock, we heard Lo Que Se A and Bubbles call in to get into the first locking of the day. We were first in, and soon the gates closed behind us at about 0615.

We were started down and had descended about 3 feet when another boat named Vision called from some distance up the waterway wanting to lock down. Now every time we have come to a lock where we were a few minutes behind the start of a locking, we were told to wait until the next cycle. But no, when we are on the other end of the stick, we have to wait anyway while the dopey lockmaster changes his mind and reverses the flow in order to reopen the gates and accept the new boat. Phooey!

As we were waiting in the lock, we heard a low roar. We went up to the flying bridge to look over the lock wall at the floodgates to find a huge amount of water flowing over the dam. Things were looking good for a swift transit and maybe we could skip the half-way anchorage and make it all the way to Coffeeville Lock in one day instead of two..

We eventually exited the lock in good order and had a strong push under clear skies with crisp autumn air most of the way to mile 117 at Bobby’s Fish Camp, arriving at 1530. At one point we achieved 12 MPH.

This place is NOT a marina. It is a floating fuel dock with a maybe 80-foot long extension for tying up boats. During the busy southbound rush times like now, the general rule is that boats alongside the pier will have others rafted up outboard. When we arrived, all the available dock space except the fueling area was full, and we had been told on the radio that it was desirable to keep that area clear. We rounded up into the current and checked with the crew of Patience (a Navigator 4400) about tying up along their outboard side. Soon after that was accomplished, Bubbles (a 37-ft Nordic Tug) came along our outboard side.

We ended up with eight boats tied up. There are three nested together ahead of us, three in our group, and two nested astern at the fuel dock.

We went up to the restaurant and had dinner with the other crews in our nest. It was southern fried seafood at is best in this long and lonely stretch of nowhere.

The Coffeeville Lock is about a mile downstream, and we anticipate a slower paced day tomorrow because we only plan to go 54 miles to Three Rivers Creek, another place with no cell phone coverage.

Then we will be in good position to go to Fairhope on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay and visit Marge Griffith.

4 November 2006
We awoke this morning at 0600 at Bobby’s Fish Camp to voices and movement outside the boat. Since our day’s voyage was only to be 55 miles, our planned departure was governed more by the desire of the inboard boat in our nest of three boats to be underway at 0700 than any desire to make tracks down the river.

The noise I was hearing was from the two outboard boats in the nest ahead of us getting underway in some fog for the short trip down to the lock. That was OK with me because I figured that if they got a lockage, we’d pick up the next cycle. However, on a hunch I called the lockmaster at Coffeeville Lock to check traffic and found that he had six tows coming downstream but could not tell me when. The bottom line was that if we wanted to get downstream of our last lock this trip with any timeliness, we’d have to join the several boats now disappearing into the fog.

I alerted the now stirring crews on Patience, the inboard boat, and Bubbles outboard of us that we needed to move sooner than later, and we started making preparations to get moving. When we arrived at the lock we were delighted to see Vision, the boat that we had to wait for at the Demopolis Lock, moored to the first bollard and waiting for us for a change.

Our trip down river to Three Rivers Lake was uneventful and we followed Bubbles and tried to troubleshoot a radio problem they were having. We finally agreed to have them come alongside us after we anchored so I could remove on of our radios and hook it up to his power and antenna for a test. We ended up eating dinner with Roger and Dixie Olson after solving his radio problem. What did we do to fix it? Who knows? Sometimes electronics just wants to e “handled” and put back in place to work.

Later on I think I solved a nagging problem I have been having with my computer-aided navigation using a GPS input through the computer’s parallel port. The two laptops in have been using seem to have over time developed the inability to maintain contact with the GPS. Checking the GPS itself shows a solid bunch of satellites with high signal strengths. When I first started having the problem a few weeks ago, I solved the problem by switching out the IBM ThinkPad for the Toshiba. Then, after a week or two, the Toshiba developed the same problem. Turning off and restarting the GPS and computer would sometimes fix the problem for a few hours.

All this time, we had a battery-powered cooler plugged into a cigarette lighter plug on the other side of the helm from the GPS. I noticed once in a while that the GPS was unaccountably off. Usually I would just hit the “on” button and it was fine. However, today I noticed that when I plugged the cooler into the 12-volt cigarette lighter socket, the GPS went off. When I reenergized the GPS, the computer would not regain GPS data until I unplugged the cooler. I repeated the experiment to be sure of what I had seen.

My conclusion is that there is an improper ground to the cigarette lighter plug socket and that connecting a load to it creates some sort of ground loop that interferes with the GPS data through its ground. I removed the cooler plug from the socket and tried the ThinkPad, which has refused to work at all lately with the GPS input. To my relief, it picked up the GPS and displayed our position on Coastal Explorer all day. I snipped the ground wire to the plug tonight and ran a new ground to a ground block I installed some years after the apparently shoddy installation (mine) of the cigarette plug. The other laptop is now plugged into the GPS and happily computing and displaying our position on CE.

We remain rafted with Bubbles tonight, but we used their dinghy to run out their anchor at a 45-degree angle to ours. Tomorrow morning we will simply placed their lines aboard and push them away before starting up and getting underway at 0600 for Fairhope, AL, 81 miles away.

The anchorage we are in is my favorite on the Tenn-Tom. It is sheltered form all current and from winds from any direction. It is approached through a very narrow half-mile long canal that in low river levels will not allow passage to even our 4.5 feet. Once through the canal, a wide area is entered that can support many boats at single anchors. There are five here tonight.

5 November 2006
We determined last night that we would try to get 81 miles down the road to Fairhope and stay at Eastern Shore Marine in Fly Creek. That meant another early departure, and we were up before dawn.

Getting the anchor in out of the sticky mud bottom proved a little harder than normal, and I used the 50-foot retrieving line (1/2-inch twisted) to help get it out. I probably could have used the engines with the chain at short stay to loosen the anchor, as I often do, but the hefty line was handy and shackled to the back end of the anchor, so why not use it. I eased off the wildcat’s brake and took in on the nylon line wrapped around the gypsy head and let the nylon’s stretch slowly pull the anchor loose.

Then we cast off Bubbles who got moving about an hour later.

It was just as well we had to spend the extra time to get moving because we would have ended up in a semi-darkness mess in the canal leading to our anchorage. It seems that several boats had anchored in the narrow mouth of the canal after we had passed through enroute to the anchorage in the lake. Getting by them meant weaving between them idling by about two feet from their sides while studiously ignoring the depth sounder as it warned of impending doom. We didn’t even wake them up – stealth trawler.

Our run down the remaining 64 miles of the Tenn-Tom Waterway and the 17 miles of open waters of Mobile Bay was mostly uneventful, aside from trying to get around the towboat Charles Haun and his eight empty barges. While in the river, I arranged to have Mary at the helm for a while when a towboat was coming the other way. She talked to the towboat skipper and conned the boat throughout the passing – about time after five weeks of river travel.

We first came upon the Charles Haun as he was negotiating a sharp bend and taking up the entire river. I slowed us up to keep pace with him off his quarter so as not to end up in the maelstrom of his wake. When he finally got straightened out and agreed to a passing, I fire walled the throttles to get the 2 or three-knot advantage we would have to slowly move up alongside and eventually pass – it was not going to happen quickly.

What did happen was that we came around a gentle curve to find another towboat about a half mile ahead pushing his barges over to our side of the river to allow the Haun to pass. Not accounted for in anybody’s calculation was the narrowness of the passage between the Huan and the back end of the other towboat sticking out into the channel. By this time, we were “racing” abreast of the bow of the Haun’s forward barges. The question was, could we get far enough ahead to cut back in front of the Haun’s load before we ran out of room. I normally pass a barge and continue well on down range before moving over back into the channel in case we should have a propulsion casualty.

A quick call to the Haun about the situation revealed that slowing on his part with the empties and the current wind would put him “on the hill.” I hauled back the throttles and veered in astern of the Haun where we and another boat remained for bout another fifteen to twenty minutes until the Haun eventually slowed way down and let us pass in a bend. I thanked him as we went by and was surprised to hear him express gratitude for “what you did for me back there” in slowing to clear the other tow. I guess he was about ready to slow and risk piling up on the riverbank to avoid our being trapped between the two tows. For my part, it was no emergency but could have become one in another 60 seconds or so had I been foolish and pressed ahead. Unfortunately, my guess is that he has seen some boaters dumb enough to do just that and was prepared to assume I was one of those dummies.

We got into Eastern Shore Marine at Fly Creek in Fairhope, AL but about 1500. As usual, the dock master’s advice about fenders proved bogus. It was especially egregious because it was the marina owner giving the advice. As we approached through what looked to be a yacht club Sunday afternoon sailboat race, I asked what side we’d need fenders on, and, after he had gone to look at the slip, I got the word that a head-in approach would require us to place fenders on the starboard side.

When we got to the place where he was waving us in, we found a narrow, forty-foot slip between a trawler and a cabin cruiser about our size. With two pilings at the outer end and a tiny ten-foot pier between the trawler and us, I quickly realized that fenders would be unnecessary because the rub rail against the pilings solves the fendering issue. Besides, any fenders we put over would be dragged off by the pilings.

The other thing that quickly became apparent was that going head-in would require us to scramble over the bow during the anticipated rains for the two days we intended to remain here. I just hate it when we have gotten ourselves into the narrow confines of a marina only to find the mooring plan has to be scrapped.

As we were securing the boat, I happened to look over at the transom of the trawler moored next to us. I was none other than the Jolly Bee, last seen by us about 700 hundred miles ago on the Tennessee. They had called us once from the Tenn-Tom on the cell phone to compare positions, but they were about a hundred miles ahead. Now they are home in Tennessee, and the boat is stored in Fairhope for a month. I rearranged the loose stern lines and a fender between the boat and the finger pier between the boats and then called Allan and Tracy in Tennessee to tell them all was well.

We topped off a really nice day by being picked up by fellow Trawlers and Trawlering email list friend Marge Griffith for dinner at her house with Gordon and their houseguests Bill and Judy. Wonderful evening and spectacular company – thank you, thank you.

The REALLY bad weather on Monday night fully justified the decision to remain in Fairhope for two nights.

7 November 2006
Underway at 0610 turned out to be a good idea in that we avoided the expected wind shift from E and SE to NW across Mobile Bay. We managed to get down the Bay and into the confines of the Intracoastal Waterway as the wind began to pick up off our stern. About this time a porpoise jump clear of the water off the bow, and we new we were home to the Gulf.

We oozed along for ten hours of uneventful cruising in mostly Florida waters. The water bubbling up astern is now clear and clean looking instead of the caramel-popcorn look of the wake in the Tenn-Tom.

We anchored in behind a small island in the waterway west of Fort Walton and witnessed numerous Air Force aircraft in the pattern at Hurlburt Field as the sun set over Santa Rosa Island’s dunes and sea oats. We also had a real show of pelican air power as several formations of hundreds of birds flew by. Pelicans seem to lack the formation discipline of geese, preferring instead to fly in log waving lines. Living in the South all year probably makes them a bit less intense than the fast and furious geese.

Tomorrow will be our last day underway as we traverse well-known waters for the 65-mile run home. We will likely get moving whenever I wake up, which is usually 0600-ish. We’ll be home by early afternoon.

8 November 2006
We got underway from anchorage near Hurlburt Field west of Fort Walton at 0625. The computer predicts a 1408 arrival at our pier. If you get this, we made it.

During a linear cruise like we have just completed, a number of data points are collected and digested in the course of our daily activities. Boring to some, vitally interesting to others, these things nonetheless occupied our minds:

Statistics:
We were away from 30 September to 8 November, 40 days, 22% of a standard Navy deployment Days underway – 34
Days in port- 6
Nights in marinas - 28
Nights at anchor - 12
Locks and dams transited – 36
Single highest locking – 82 feet (would have been higher had not Wilson lock been broken)
Highest elevation achieved - Watts Bar Lake at 741 feet above sea level
Generator hours - 127
Main engine hours - 235
Average speed - 9.9 MPH
Gallons Diesel aboard at start – 600
Gallons Diesel bought along the way – 720
Gallons Diesel aboard at finish - 380
Gallons diesel consumed - 920
Statute miles traveled – 2344
Statute miles/gallon – 2.5
Nautical miles/gallon – 2.2

Things that went south:
Two generator casualties repaired at no cost
Refrigerator thermostat. Installed on board spare.
One weird GPS data loss casualty fixed at no cost
One depth finder tango uniform. This will cost.
One gas grill regulator flamed out. This will also cost.
Cabin leaks found during rains. Future time and effort to cure.
Noisy port shaft. Haul out in Demopolis to find clogged cooling line. A bit costly.

Things that were good:
Chart plotting computers; do not leave home without them.
The sights we saw
The people we met
The overall accomplishment as a boat crew
The main engines, God bless 'em for the ever-dependable creatures they are. Everything else can go to heck, but with dependable mains, we are unstoppable.
New anchor wash down pump made for a lot cleaner anchor and Rich too.
And, yes, the generator, once its bugs were exorcized

Home are the sailors

2009-04-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

I am sorry, but I miscalculted fuel use and am reposting this for the sake of correctness. We used 4.0 gal/hour and made 2.0 MPG, which is very close to our 2006 trip figures.

Over the last three days we have indeed made some tracks! First was a 70-mile day getting to Cedar Key from anchorage near Tarpon Springs. Next was the trek across the Big Bend to anchorage near St George Island, another 130 miles, arriving at 10:30 PM. Finally, today we got home from St George Island, a 104-mile run. At an average 9 miles per hour that's about 34 hours of underway time in those three days. We are a bit tired.

Overall we ran the boat 1499 miles in 50 days, about 30 miles per day on average, consumed 749 gallons of diesel fuel and racked up 185 hours on the engines. that is 4 gallons per hour and 2.0 miles per gallon. Due to the distance goals we set for each leg of our trip, we tended to run the boat at higher engine RPM than we did on our 2006 trip up the Tennessee River where we got about 2.2 MPG, and we ran into a lot rougher waters than on that trip where it was flat all the time.

Today, we ran across two trawlers that had made the run across the Big Bend the day before we did and chatted with them on the radio. I think one of them will be coming to spend a day or two at our pier.

The boat ran well with only a valve cover gasket requiring replacement on the port engine. There were no issues with the generator this trip. It was not run much because the mild weather made for comfortable sleeping without air conditioning. The air horns had a relay go bad; it was replaced. And, of course, the biggest single expense of the trip was replacement of the radar. That cost more than twice the fuel bill.

As noted above, the weather was mostly just right. We got rained on only one time, and that was at night. The only problems we had with weather was when we were sort of stuck due to winds being too high for a comfortable open water transit.

Our greatest reward was the wonderful people we met - you do meet the nicest folks when boating.

Like the bear that went over the mountain, we saw what we could see. We probably won't go over that specific mountain again, but there was talk of a trip down to and across Lake Okeechobee and then up to the St Johns River for a look see down that body of water, but first we need to get Mary to the Grand Canyon.

Hope you enjoyed the blog of out excellent adventure. This closes out this blog.

Ugly, Bad and Good

2009-04-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

The ugly part was trusting both the cruising guide and the channel markers at Cedar Key. We got underway at o640 this AM intending to make a daylight run of 113 miles to St George Island in the panhandle. We came in the Main Ship Channel from the south yesterday and were intending to depart via the Northwest Channel due to its some 16 mile shorter run to the panahandle. Even at low water, we should have had enough water in the NW channel, but we didn't and had to spend 2.5 hours waiting for the tide to float us of the mud - right in the center of the channel.

The bad part was the fact that with the delay we were required to run the Dog Island Channel in pitch black.

the good part was that we enjoyed the smoothest sea we have seen in an open water transit thus far.

Tonight we sleep in our own bed ashore.

The Scarlotte O'Haras

2009-04-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

Much like the famous damsel in distress in "Gone With the Wind," we find ourselves dependent upon the "kindness of others" as we awaken in the friendly embrace of Jeff and Suzanne Wright's pilings and friendship. And of course, their dogs, Clancy and Clare (infringer's rule 1: you might forget your hosts' names, but NEVER their pets).

We had intended a longer stay with our friends, but forces of nature urge us onward on two different fronts. First is the fair forecast for Thursday and Friday upon the big waters of the Big Bend. Second is the Mary magnet of all her family, especially the grand kids who NEED all the treasures she has freighted us down with. We have probably dropped a half knot in speed due to the souvenir weight.

So this morning we bid adieu to our good friends and pushed along through the ICW a mere 36 miles to Anclote Key anchorage. If all goes as planned, we have seen our last pier and set our feet on the ground for the last time until we arrival home.

Our plan is to avoid the long over night passage crossing of the Big Bend by staging through Cedar Key 70 miles north of Anclote Key where we are currently anchored. We will anchor again at Cedar Key on Thursday night and then run 113 miles (near the limit of what we can run in daylight) WNW to Dog Island. At that point we will be within the protected waters of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and 95 miles from home through familiar waters we don't even need charts for any more.

Cedar Key is a less than desireable location due to its rather unprotected anchorage, but if the predicted light easterly winds prevail, we should have a decent night. At any rate, it is a place we can hang out during darkness in order to get daylight running hours in the Gulf.

As we depart Lower Florida, we would again like to thank the good folks who have hosted us and become our friends. The old adage that you meet the nicest people afloat (or associated with boats) was never truer.

Misbehavin'

2009-04-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, we were BAD. We went into the renowned Crow's Nest Restaurant and gobbled up everything we could order. Seafood bisque of the first stripe, swordfish with Bearnaise, and Mary had her first-ever order of stone crabs, which I had to assist in cracking. Then we retired to the boat, bloated, to sleep it off. Mary was even too full to attempt the house creme broule.

But before that, we rode a couple of the marina loaner bikes around town there in Venice. What a pretty town! It was full of broad boulevards with overhanging trees. The downtown shopping district looked well kept and was of a style gone a generation or three ago. We rode back to the marina in a spitting rain.

I am considering penning a cookbook entitled "The Ford-Lehman Cookbook" subtitled "Use That Hunk of Hot Iron for Something Besides Propulsion." Every time Mary wants to heat something up in the nuker, I tell her I'd be happy to open the engine room hatch and place the item wrapped up in foil on either of the Ford-Lehman main engines laboring away under her feet. She hasn't taken me up on it yet, but today she placed an item on the teak deck in the sun to take some refrigerator chill off it; so maybe she's coming around to my way of thinking.

This cooking idea is not so half-baked either. Temperature control accomplished by placing the items to be cooked on different parts of the engine. Having done a temperature study of the engines at cruising speed with my infra-red thermometer gun, I have a very good idea about where to place things. Why I could even get out my big black magic marker and ink the various expected temperatures on the engine for easy reference. My ear plugs are handy for when the world's resounding approval is received.

Enough of this reverie, as we are getting close to the Wright'shome here in Treasure Island, and I must attend more closely to my navigation.

South then north and running for cover

2009-04-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

Fortunately, the "bread crumbs" were faithfully recorded in Coastal Explorer yesterday, and we were away from the pier at 0750 this morning, waving goodbye to Roxanne, Serrin and Gail. Thanks again, folks - you are all keepers! We are the richer for this experience.

After an hour of twisting and turning, we finally emerged unscathed into Charlotte Harbor where we went southward for and hour or so before we could turn westward for another hour or so after which we again returned to our northward trek.

We have a 40% chance of thunderstorms later today (we are, after all, nearing the thunderstorm capital of the world), and we will thus remain inside the ICW rather than run the faster outside route. We will probably stop at the Crow's Nest Marina and Restaurant in Venice for the night, where the food is legendary.

Tomorrow promises better weather, and we will see if we can get as far as Treasure Island where I need to start some weather studies about crossing to Apalachicola. At present, it appears that a weather window will be available to cross in in 72 hours.

Doing the circuit in Punta Gorda

2009-04-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

This is the way to cruise - get up, walk up to the inn for breakfast, get underway for a leisurely 23-mile cruise, pick up a local pilot, and be treated like long-lost family by very kind people (the pilot's family).

But first, we have a raid to report. While preparing the boat to get underway, a noise was heard on a nearby open boat which was assumed to be the owner getting ready for a fishing trip. Lids of various compartments and containers could be heard opening and slamming shut. Upon finally glancing up to see what was going on, the pictured escape artist otters (four) were seen slipping out of the boat the way they had probably come aboard.

As we appraoched the inlet to the EXTENSIVE canal system of which Chris and Gail Wilkinson's backyard is a part, we were directed by Chris to a pier adjacent to the boat ramp just inside the entrance where he boarded us for the 50-minute ride toward their home around the perimeter of their massive development. As we were on the flying bridge away from the computer below, I prayed that the plotting software was faithfully laying down a "bread crumb" track in our wake so we would be able to find our way out tomorrow when Chris would not be available to pilot us out.

We were kindly given permission to settle into the vacant pier behind the home of their neighbors Seth and Roxanne who were very gracious to us vagabonds of the sea. This pier was a bit more suitable for us than Chris's pier.

We met Gail and daughter Serrin and her charming 17-month old son Eric upon landing and then spent the rest of the day and into the evening in the pleasant company of this group of ex-Seattle-ites. We were treated to lunch out at a large and busy waterfront establishment and a fine steak and chicken diiner with homemade brownies and ice cream later on.

Mary learned from the ladies how to make organic homemade yogurt, and we were also treated to homemade pumpkin bread.

Things just keep getting better, and I don't wanna go home! Thanks Chris, Gail, Serrin and Eric for such a great day and for extending your friendship to strangers.

Tomorrow, I will lower the mast before we depart to get us ready to run under any of the numerous bridges north of here that are under 16.5 feet without having to wait for them to open.

Cadging grub at Cabbage Key

2009-04-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

We got underway at around 1100 today after breakfast on the beach at Fort Myers Beach and moored at Cabbage Key Marina at 1430 - not such a long day. With the dozens of FAST boats flying out of the Fort Myers area and headed the same way we were, we felt like a person walking along the lane dividing striped line on a busy freeway! Where the channel is narrow, the boats (some quiet large) just squeezed that much closer to us. I swear, some of these boats would rival a World War II PT boat of size and power. Muscle boats are very popular here - where's the recession?

Cabbage Key is one of those kind of places every jurisdiction should have at least one of - old Florida style and reachable only by boat. This jurisdiction with the buzillions of boats it has needs two or three of these. We are the biggest boat here and half of us sticks out well into the basin.

After getting settled in, we took a walk around the mile or so long nature trail, climbed the 1930s era water tower, and generally hung around until our dinner reservation at 1830. There are a few rental cabins and a large old-fashioned restaurant.

Tomorrow, we will get underway after breakfast and head inland to Punta Gorda to visit with Chris and Gail Wilkinson who we know via the Trawler and Trawlering email list will meet for the first time in person. They have a berth for the Calypso at their place and have offered us their hospitality. We are looking forward to this visit but will unfortunately have limited time with them - this time.

Schmoozin' while cruisin'

2009-04-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

We spent the night anchored in the rich folks' backyards again last night in Port Royal, just inside Gordon Pass. As you can see from the picture, Mary enjoyed being invited to tea in the home of one of the little old rich ladies while I was stuck checking engines and handling fuel management.

This morning I watched as the nearest 70-80 foot sport fisherman's boat boy came to work at 0800 to administer the daily bath. I wonder if some smart guy has started a boat service like the pool guys have?

The weather was perfect with no A/C needed. As predicted, the winds have veered (that's changing clockwise for you lubbers) to the east with a vengeance. This was the wind I scooted up here from Key West yesterday to avoid while in open water - it would have obviated any such open-water activity. So we are hugging the shoreline today (as planned) for the relative calm water while we wander up to Fort Myers Beach on a 3.5-hour run. I love it when a plan comes together. MAN! is this wind ever whistling! We are showing a degree or two of port list due to the force of the wind on our starboard beam, but we are riding well without just a bit of "jiggle" from the wavelets hitting that side. Thank goodness for the lee we are enjoying. The crab pots are easier to see and avoid in this calmer water too.

I noticed a fellow trawler northbound a bit farther out at see and called them to find out how they were riding out there. A delightful conversation ensued as we discovered Al and Rosie Scwartz in Nautilus also bound for Fort Myers Beach. We agreed to meet later for dinner. Since they were going to a mooring ball, they came over about 1800 by dinghy, and after sitting around enjoying each other's company for awhile, we all trooped over to the Matanzas Inn for dinner. It just doesn't get any better than meeting fine folks like Al and Rosie while out cruising. THey own and operate a resort and marina in Michigan (www.riverviewresortand marina.com) in Michigan in the summer and cruise their boat (stored on the hard in Charlotte Harbor) in the winter.

Since we were down to 50% fuel, and Ballard oil (cheapest on the coast) is in Fort Myers Beach, we took on several hundred gallons before we headed over to Moss Marine for a marina stay of a day of so while we re-provision foodstuffs.

I spent last evening and part of this morning filling the forward fuel tanks from the aft tanks by running the diesel through the polisher (while Mary was at her apocryphal tea party). that way all the new fuel from Mr. Ballard will go aft, and I can continue my practice of using polished fuel from the forward tanks on each day's run. The VERY LAST thing I want while running through any unpleasantness or in a channel is to have engine stoppage due to fouled filters. I changed the starboard engine Racor fuel filter (foot-tall filter with big clear bowl on bottom) in Key West before yesterday's run because it had begun to show 2 or 3 inches of mercury on the vacuum gauge. That's really pretty early considering the engine will run with 10-15 inches of vacuum, but I am overly cautious in this area.

Mary is MUCH improved from her tummy bug and "sat up and took nourishment" this morning. She's looking forward to a "run ashore" from the Marina in Fort Myers Beach. Her attitude took a dramatic turn for the better yesterday at 1600 as we regained cell phone contact with the rest of the world off shore from Marco Island.

Splish, splash, we made a dash

2009-04-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, the weather predictions for today showed a settled sea of 1-2 feet and winds in the single digit range out of the north - not so bad. So I gave our slip rent to John Caffrey to turn in this morning when the office opens, and we got underway at 0640 for the first leg of our homeward voyage.

Needless to say, the predictions were for a bit less sea than we have been seeing all day, but they are not as bad as they are going to get in the next day. Once on the mainland coast, we have a lot more alternatives, and after we get to Fort Myers Beach tomorrow, it will be a couple of short miles to get into the protection of the Intracoastal Waterway.

For now, we have Marco Island in sight to starboard and will bypass it in favor of a previously used anchorage at Port Royal just inside Gordon Pass.

Mary has had a tummy bug and has spent the day abed, leaving me to fend for myself here at the conn for the 13-hour transit. So, I have come up with a new definition of rough seas. It's too rough if I cannot safely open the refrigerator and successfully make a sandwich without accidentally spreading mayo on my hand instead of the bread. It wasn't too rough today! :)

2009-04-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

This is a view of the Logger Head Key lighthouse (2.7 miles west of Fort Jefferson) at sunset our first day at the Dry Torgugas. Red sky at night, sailors' delight, goes the saying, but we have heard it wasn't that way last night out there.

We got moored at around 2100 after running the channel at full speed with both chartplotters online and radar overlayed on one of them and Mary holding the searchlight on the channel markers (she hates this part cuz the light is heavy). As the last line was put on the cleat, a ferocious thunderstorm broke over us as the fast-moving front blew through the area.

Our friends John and Helen Caffrey of Zephyrina greeted us and help us moor but had to run form home as the rains started. They report having a rental car and wishing to help us run some errands before we both maybe depart Sunday.

Yesterday's experience has been confirmed as a validating experience for us. John and Julie aboard the Island Chariot (who I helped put out a second anchor the other day) sailed into the marina an hour ago with a harrowing tale of the events of last night in the Fort Jefferson anchorage. The winds howled, and boats dragged anchors (one went aground). Chaos generally prevailed, and no sleep was gotten. John said that I must have known something he didn't when we abruptly left. He said they left this morning at 0800, and it was very rugged for a good portion of their trip today.

Julie said some boats left but returned.

I have been studying the weather predictions again this morning and find that until this weekend, we would be fighting northerly winds while making a run across the western end of Florida Bay from Key West to the Naples area. Predictions on one day of the next several are for up to 21 knots of northerly winds - NOT our kind of weather. While not the best of weather, Sunday looks doable, at least for the moment.

Yo yoing to/from Dry Tortugas

2009-04-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday 11 April 2009
As Key West and our connectivity fade over the horizon astern of us, I am turning to Word as a repository for the Chronicles of Calypso. I’ll copy all this into the blog when we get back to “civilization.”

We have just exited Northwest Channel, which leads, you guessed it, NW out of KW. We experienced little winds and a foot or so of wave and swell as we ran down the south coast of Key West. If it had been a flat calm, we would have gone the shorter route to the Dry Tortugas south of the shoals separating the Atlantic from Florida Bay.

For now, we are in very calm waters headed west. By 1100 we are alone on an aqua-marine sea about 30 feet deep. We can see none of the very flat parts of the Marquesas Keys 7 miles SW. We dodge the occasional lobster or crab pot buoy as the only sign of civilization. Weather is mostly cloudy and hazy with a light breeze from the south. Temperature in the cabin is 75, and we have the windows and doors open for perfect comfort.

We just crossed an area designated as a danger zone. Surface navigation is unrestricted, but no anchoring or other bottom activity is allowed due to bottom mines! Hmmmmm.

1520 and we have both had a nap; me on the settee; Mary leaning over on me on the pilot bench. Saw a fast catamaran loaded up with tourists heading for Key West via the southern route. We are in the strait between the end of the shoals and the Dry Tortugas with light winds and 1- to 2-foot seas off the port bow – no spray on deck this trip. Should begin to see some of top of Fort Jefferson in the next hour or so.

1635 – fort ho! A long low blocky shape has appeared through the haze at 3 miles. Pretty crummy visibility, if you ask me. Anyway, the electronics didn’t lie; there is something out here.

There is a sailboat about 2 miles ahead us us apparently headed into the park. We should catch up before too long.

We moored alongside the Fort Jefferson visitor pier (2-hour maximum) at 1715 and immediately went to the credit card satellite telephone there and tried to make a call to brother Jim to cancel our float plan. After over a half hour of conversation with the sat phone technical support people, it became obvious that the credit method was not going to work, and they finally agreed to connect us on an emergency basis. Anyway, we were able to let people know where we are.

By 1835, we were anchored with our old-fashioned fisherman anchor and wandering about amongst the half dozen or so vessels already inhabiting the limited area. From our vantage point, we were able to see a spectacular sunset behind the Loggerhead Key lighthouse.

The fort is closed at sunset, but the lights on the pier were on for a couple of hours afterward while some park employees and contract New England brick masons gathered to fish and chat. Later, the looming bulk of the fort was blacked out but for a lone light seen through one of the second story embrasures.

Sunday, April 12, 2009
We went to sleep with a light wind out of the east and some rolling, but during the night I woke up to find the water surface glassy calm. Today has seen a pretty steady east wind and moderate rolling. Our Magma flopper stopper could probably use a twin on the other side, but as it is, I am sure it is helping reduce the rolling.

We got the dinghy launched and went to the dinghy beach before the tourist catamaran ferries from Key West arrived at 1030. We “spectated” while they moored to the pier and disembarked their crowd and then joined the guided tour of the fort given by the tour guide brought along by the ferry line. After the tour, we returned to the boat for lunch and then went back ashore shortly before the ferries left.

We found out that Fort Jefferson is the biggest masonry structure in the world after the Great Wall of China. Abandoned in the late 1800s as obsolete. It suffered hurricane damage and neglect as well as damage from it own iron embrasure covers, which swelled under the brick as they corroded causing the brick exterior to be spalled off into the moat. That damage is now being addressed in part.

We accosted the much-vaunted National Park Service historian (a double masters degree in fortification design and architecture) and talked him into a tour for the boaters beginning tomorrow at 0900. He says that will give us time for a good session before the ferry boats arrive – it being a bit awkward for him to be giving tours at the same time the ferry boat guides are taking their charges around.

In the afternoon hours, we walked around the entire moat wall and then into the fort to look at areas we’d missed earlier. Then we informed the other boats in the anchorage of the special tour tomorrow as we made our way back home.

As we are expecting a bit more wind tomorrow and into Tuesday, I felt it wise to add out 40-pound CQR anchor and 120 feet of chain to the old fisherman anchor we put down yesterday, which has 20 feet of chain and 120 feet of 5/8-inch twisted anchor rode out. They are about 60 degrees apart off the bow to the east and southeast. I will sleep better now.

Surprisingly, I am getting clear broadcasts from the marine VHF weather channels. Mary even has a good FM music station on the entertainment radio system. Unfortunately, the weather forecasts are not as mild as what I was getting from the computer websites before we left Key West. The best time to leave here this week still looks to be Tuesday night, but we will have 10-15 knots of wind astern with probably 2-4 foot seas – NOT the seas state I would like, but better than being from off a beam or the bow.

We heard the good news that the captain of a high jacked US freighter off Somalia was rescued after Navy SEALs shot and killed three of the pirates. Through a complex series of events, the captain had ended up as a hostage of the pirates in one of his ship’s lifeboats while his ship steamed off to its destination after USS Bainbridge showed up on the scene. It was from the Bainbridge that the SEAL snipers snuffed out the pirates. Thank goodness AMERICA responded in an appropriate manner. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot more dead and captured pirates in the future. I was yelling in approval and sounding the ship’s whistle. Hoo-rah!

As dusk settled in well, I was out on deck and happened to look down into the water to see a LARGER brown shape approaching the boat. I was initially in mind of calling it a nurse shark due to the general shape, but after it settled into a position just under the swim platform, it became evident we had been adopted by a 6-foot long grouper. It hung out with us for an hour or so before we noticed it gone.

Monday 13 April 2009
Winds were brisk in the 15 MPH range this morning making launching the dinghy a bit interesting, but we had an appointment with Chris Zeigler, the fort historian for a special tour for the boaters. We both ended up a bit wet as we made our landing on the course sand dinghy beach where the surf wanted to fill up the dinghy from astern – we had to hurry to drag the dink up on the sand.

Mary and I had listed a bunch of questions we wanted him to answer, and I posed them to him at appropriate times in his tour. It was a real treat to get the expert to our small group of boaters. It was especially interesting to hear him talk about how his small apartment in one of the lower level gun casemates leaks during the infrequent rains much as described in the letters home from soldiers 150 years ago. He says the cement securing the brickwork also tends to drop small bits of grit into his cereal bowl; so he keeps his food and electronics covered all the time. Rangers do a 10-day “on” hitch followed by a 4-day off stretch in Key West.

Mary got into the small souvenir shop before we went back to the boat to ride out whatever the weather decided to throw at us. As we were finishing up placing the dinghy in its cradle, I heard a startled expression from Mary who had gone around to the starboard side. I was surprised to see a full-sized brown pelican standing on deck staring us down. It didn’t seem too concerned, but after the visit was appropriately documented via photographic evidence, the thing was coaxed onto the cap rail for a clumsy, but effective take-off (after depositing a small gift, which was promptly washed over board).

Our afternoon entertainment has evolved to time spent with binoculars in hand watching the new arrivals seek safe holding ground in the limited anchorage area. We now have 20 boats here, and at least one of them in uncomfortably close to Calypso. Our two anchors out off the bow will make for an interesting recovery tomorrow as we must veer closer to boats on either side of us to get over the top of the anchors to break them out of the bottom. Oh, well, that’s for tomorrow. For now the winds are down to about 12 MPH, and we can see some moderation of the rolling we have been putting up with – I hope that continues.

So here I am in the middle of nowhere cooking a couple of hamburgers as the sun sets when this guys approaches us from astern in his dinghy clearly intent on direct communication. “Hey, it’s me, Tommy Poppell,” he says. It was none other than our past commodore of the Panama City Coastal Cruisers on his way to Mexico. I told him about the couple in the sailboat off our starboard bow who had just come in from Honduras. This place is a real crossroads.

Tommy stayed for just a few minutes at the swim step, too tired to climb aboard, and relayed his tale of woe about a 24-hour trip into the wind in 12-foot seas from Fort Myers in his sailboat. Goodness, that’s like having to walk uphill both ways to school as a kid, through the snow. He said he’d had to use 12 gallons of his precious 42 gallons of diesel and was considering going to Key West to refuel. I offered him all he could take, but for now he has demurred. We’ll talk some tomorrow.

Later on, we had disappointing weather forecasts from the several NOAA weather stations (Naples, Tampa, and Key West) that I can hear. There is a strong front moving through central Florida cutting off our route to the mainland. Seas are not predicted to really settle down between the wind shifts associated with fronts, and even if they were to do so, predicting just the right hour to depart in the face of impending bad weather is akin to playing Russian roulette with you life.

Tuesday 14 April 2009
We awoke to find the winds shifted to the south, as predicted. A weather forecast from Key West, which said the winds will die off to a tolerable 10 knots later today and tomorrow, will give us a chance to leave early in the day tomorrow, after the riotous seas we can see on the far side of the reef have died down a bit. Once across the first twenty miles of relatively open waters we would be behind the protection of the shoals, where seas are predicted to be 1-2 feet all the way to Key West.

If we leave early enough in the day tomorrow, we can get phone contact with the staff at Boca Chica in order to arrange a berth before they quit for the day. Otherwise, we’ll have to settle for anchoring off Key West or paying the ruinous dockage rates there.

The more I listened to the NOAA broadcasts on the marine VHF radio, the more it became apparent that a predicted wind shift from SE to NW will be associated with the ferocious front currently south of Tampa (and apparently headed our way). I went over to Tommy Poppell’s boat to view his Sirius weather system on his laptop after dropping Mary off at the pier for some last minute shopping in the fort bookstore. His graphic depiction showed a very angry-looking weather front already at Fort Myers. Leaving for Naples on our original schedule would have been sheer folly, if not worse.

I became uncomfortable with even remaining in the Dry Tortugas overnight for a run back to Boca Chica.
In return for a call to Boca Chica to reserve a slip for tonight (and one for Island Chariot, a sailboat coming back later) on Tommy’s satellite phone, I repaired a bent stainless steel shackle using my vice and hammer and drilled a safety wire hole in the pin for him (being the good guy I am, I didn’t charge him for the broken drill bit).

Then it was hightail it to the pier and get Mary aboard and in gear for immediate departure. After hurriedly retrieving the dinghy and both anchors, we got underway at 1220 for an after-dark return to Boca Chica. With 4-6 foot seas just outside the reef, we had precious little time to prepare any lunch before it got too rough to be opening the refrigerator door and dealing with food and drink.

For about three and a half hours we were getting a pretty rough ride until we got behind the shoals where we were protected against the south winds and swell all the rest of the way to Key West.

We are passing through Key West as I write this, and we will arrive Boca Chica at 2200.

So long, Key West

2009-04-10T17:41:00.000-07:00

We have enjoyed our stay in the Key West area seeing the sights and making new friends, but it is now past time to move along to our turn-around point of the Dry Tortugas National Park.

Weather reports indicate we will get a bit of a blow Monday afternoon and Tuesday with very nice conditions prevailing on Tuesday afternoon and into the morning on Wednesday with winds and seas tending to blow us along toward the mainland. Guess we will have to make a night passage to the mainland. What is one to do? It's the weather, mon.

For you Navy types, reveille and breakfast for the crew was 0600 today with the Special Sea and Anchor Detail set at 0745. We were underway about 0800 and found little or no wind at sea with just a foot or two of swell.

Today's trip will take us west to the Key West channel, bypass Key West to its west and continue northward into into Florida Bay. There we turn west toward the Dry Tortugas. We are taking this track because the southeasterly winds will make the more direct trip a bit rougher than going north of the protecting shoals.

The blog will be kept on a Word document and then copied to this website after we get back within cell phone range of "civilization."

Planning a move

2009-04-08T05:06:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of the Civil War-era section of Fort Zachary Taylor's west casemate and the current-era turista. A good portion of this fort was built over with the concrete structure of pre-WW I coast defense artillery emplacements where a single modern disappearing cannon replaced dozens of these old black powder muzzle loaders. One of the more interesting things about this fort is its amazing collection of civil war cannons and munitions still on the premises (excavated in 1968). My guess is that it was too difficult to remove the stuff due to the lack of roads to Key West until the early 1900s. Anyway, the builders of the newer sections of the fort ended up using many of the old cannons as armor by simply piling them up in front of the new disappearing cannon positions and pouring concrete over them - you can see old cannons protruding from the concrete where it has failed and spalled off.

We took the Caffreys to dinner and a bit of shopping in the downtown district the other night and had a delightful time. Mary made her selections for the granddaughters' souvenir gifts - a major accomplishment.

Yesterday, while taking John Caffrey to Home Depot, I got two calls, one from FEDEX and one from West Marine informing me parts and mail were ready for pickup. I collected those on the way home and wish to report to Autrey and the world at large that our air horns are once again in full-throated operation. Yee-haw, toot, toot. The replacement lazarette fan will go in today. We went through all the mail Autrey forwarded last night and found no budget-breaking bills; so I told Mary we don't need to go home - picture that one flying like a lead pig.

For our afternoon and evening entertainment, we retraced our path on land eastward where we spent the best part of a breezy hour in the middle of the seven-mile bridge waiting for an accident to be cleared before we could get into Marathon. It was a pretty day which got cooler as it went making us wish we had a swaet shirt. That was the remnant of what blasted you folks in our home territory over the last few days.

On the way to Marathon we stopped in at the popular Bahia Honda State Park and walked on part of the old roadbed which had been built over the top of the original 1913 railroad bridge. The tidal current flowing out of Florida Bay into the Atlantic was nothing short of awsome.

Speaking of weather, we seem to have a window, and I am making plans for westward movement to the Dry Tortugas. By Friday night, predictions are for the winds to die off to a reasonable degree, and by Saturday, the seas will be much calmer than the current 6-8 feet. Even better, the predictions for winds on Wednesday are for light breezes and seas which will waft us landward as we make the long open-sea run from the Dry Tortugas to the mainland. We will be out of touch electronically, except for a satellite phone on the pier at Fort Jefferson on Garden Key in the Tortugas. We will make a call to Phillip and/or Jim (they are the people listed for the Coast Guard to call if our emergency satellite beacon is turned on by us) upon arrival and another upon departure. Once in sight of Naples, we will cancel our float plan with Phillip and Jim.

I will be looking at the weather predictions twice a day until we depart to ensure they are stabilized and no untoward weather phenomena are headed our way. One nice thing John pointed out to me yesterday is that the ferocious tidal currents through the Keys will be with us as we run through the Northwest Channel right by Key West on Saturday morning as we make our way to the Florida Bay side of the Keys. There, the shoals to the west of Key West extend for about two thirds of the 70 miles between Key West and the Dry Tortugas giving us sheltered water from the southerly breezes and seas for our trip out there.

Doodling about in Key West

2009-04-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Well, we have done the Key West "sunset thing" down at the wharf near Mallory Square. There was a cast of thousands there including numerous street performers juggling, playing musical instruments, and doing "performance art." The people who have been here many years back recall it as a local sort of tradition without all the hoopla, but that is clearly a thing of the past. Mary was miffed that there were no conch horns blown, and I would have admired a cannon shot. The crowd here at our marina wanders down to our end of the pier for the view and somebody somewhere in the marina has blown a conch every night we have been here for sunset.

We have accomplished several more sightseeing events including the Hemingway House, the lighthouse, and watching Michael McCloud sing at the Schooner Wharf Bar (my chief goal here in KW).

The sailboat next door, crewed by John and Helen Caffrey of Gulf Breeze, had a minor plumbing leak today and ended up needing a crow's foot wrench and a extensions to get at the offending fitting. We trawler guys are known for tool stashes. We were rewarded with carrot cake from them Helen -yum.

In Helen, I have finally found somebody with a DSC radio who has not conducted a DSC-to-DSC call wherein the radios link up and nobody else can understand the conversation. We ran a test, and where we also requested each other's position. The Zepherina's position came back displayed on my radio as well as on the Garmin 4208 chart plotter. Kewl!

On board the Calypso, I replaced the engine room blower today and had to order another one for the lazarette which had also burned out - will be here at a local store on Tuesday. Our kind neighbor, Autry Hazzard will be FEDEXing the relay for the now-silent air horns to me tomorrow along with a sack full of mail. Then we will spend the rest of the week catching up on admin - ugh!

Vance Nelson is being very patient in an effort to coach me in the process of wiring up the laptop to be able to talk to the new Garmin chart plotter so i can plan routes on the computer and send them to the plotter. After numerous configurations, I still have no connection. I am beginning to wonder if the piece of software I ordered from Garmin where the route is saved to an SD chip and then uploaded into the plotter is the only way I'll be able to accomplish this task.

For those who may think we are stuck here forever, I can report some favorable weather forecasts for next weekend. So far, Saturday and Sunday look OK, and if we can just get that weather to carry over into the following week for a couple of days, we can at least get out to the Dry Tortugas and back to Key West, if we can't move on to the Peninsula at Naples from the Dry Tortugas. In any event, we have to have some decent weather to get back to the mainland.

Bobbing in Key West

2009-04-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

Today we are bouncing a bit as the wind is blowing up the channel to the marina at 20-plus MPH. It will shift and slow tonight, but for now. one must be careful to ensure the right finger lands on the right key.

Tomorrow would be an excellent day to take off for the Dry Tortugas, but then the weather forecasts show us being stuck there for a week or so braving 20-plus MPH winds and seas in an anchorage not wholly protected. Not our idea of fun. This place is better for now.

We have gone to the Navy recreation office and bought a bunch of cut-rate tickets for various sights and sites around town. At full fare, I'd have to say most are way over-priced, as is everything here. As it is, we are paying about 2/3 for our chosen entertainment, and I am still not impressed with what we get for that. At $3.50 per car, I think the Fort Zachary Taylor State Park will be more to my liking. There they dug up a whole pot full of civil war cannon and munitions in 1968 - supposed to be biggest collection around.

I completed the installation of the new valve cover gasket on the port engine and expect no more messy oil leak into the drip pan. Will test later.

My Garmin chartplotter (the device I ad to buy to display the Garmin radar I bought in Clearwater) continues to provide tinkering fun. It has inputs for the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the VHF radio (to log Digital Selective Calling traffic), a depth sounder, engine instruments (if I had digital instruments), GPS, electronic compass, radar and maybe some other things I haven't thought of.

I finally got the AIS input working after some tinkering, and now ship which send that information are tracked on the laptop, chartplotter charts and the radar display on the chartplotter. Hooking up my electronic compass to it allows me to "hook" radar targets so the unit can track them for collision avoidance. Next stop is Radio Shack to get some more wire to connect my marine VHF radio to the thing. I still prefer the depth sounder to be separate and to have a laptop as my primary charting reference because it uses actual raster-scanned charts versus the "derived" electronic charts the chartplotter uses.

Hellooo, Key West

2009-03-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

Our short run here from Marathon was a fine day to be at sea. Mild winds and low seas were astern giving us an occasional unwelcome whiff of diesel exhaust, but otherwise it was just a very nice day. We got underway at 0900 and were pier side here at Boca Chica by 1430.

I kept the engines at around 1500 RPM trying to save a little fuel because we had plenty of time. There was very little oil in the port engine's drip pan; so my Permatex fix on the valve cover gasket seems largely effective. It will almost be a shame to pull it of again to put the new gasket in place.

As one would expect of a military base, the marina here is well run. You might say they run a tight ship. Every rock and brick is in its place; the bathrooms are capacious and clean; the concrete piers appear new and are clean; there is plenty of water and power; the laundry room is well equipped. They even have a small bar and grill.

One of the first things we noticed as we pulled in here was the amount of air activity. There were Air Force or National Guard F-16s as well as Navy F-18s in the pattern by the bunch. I also saw a lumbering P-3 (4-engine turbo-prop patrol plane), a C-130 transport, as well as an F-5 "aggressor" jet. I imagine Key West is a magnet for every military pilot who has any excuse to drop in here. Anyway, it got a little noisy yesterday afternoon as they all came home to roost.

When we checked in last night, we were told we could stay as long as we like because there are no reservations behind us to trip the normal five-day limit for transients.

We bit the bullet last night and hauled the laundry off the boat. We got it done while enjoying dinner and a drink next door at the grill.

Now we are ready to sally forth and get our hands on the rental car! Mary says we have been leading a primitive life style sans four wheels.

Ready for sea

2009-03-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

After a run ashore for lazy book reading in the park (is there such a thing as a lazy book?) and late lunch, we returned to Calypso, hoisted the dinghy inboard, ran some fresh water through its engine and threw the cover over it.

I ran forty gallons of diesel per side through the fuel polisher from storage to service tanks. We have 520 gallons of fuel remaining, sufficient to get us all the way home with about 200 gallons to spare (that 200 gallons was bought in Fort Myers Beach). It is MIGHTY FINE to pull into a marina and respond negatively to the inevitable question about the need for refueling.

We are finding our water needs to be about 20 gallons a day; so our 240 gallon capacity is good for almost two weeks. I love the looks on the faces of the sailboaters when I go out and sprinkle down the hand rails to ge the salt off. Most of them have the ubiquitous blue 4-5 gallon plastic containers on deck or in their dinghies they use every trip ashore to replenish their water supplies.

Our other equipment is checked, stowed, and otherwise set to go for what COULD (but hopefully won't) be a rocky ride tomorrow for 36 miles of open Atlantic Ocean en route to NAF Boca Chica.

We have seen several boats departing today as the winds have definitely died down. In contrast to the brisk winds we have had all day for three days running, the breezes are quite mild this evening and from the west as predicted. The wind should be out of the north tomorrow which is good for us because we will be skirting the southern shores of the Keys.

When we decide to head for the Dry Tortugas in a week or so, I'll look at the predicted winds and go either north or south of the shoals and Marquesas Islands to avoid the worst of what may get kicked up. Ideally, our trip out there will cover a five-day period with reasonable weather predictions allowing us visit a couple of days and then run the 100-plus mile track directly back to the mainland at Naples. Once out at there, we will have little information on weather coming directly to the boat. We will have to look at the NOAA weather bulletin posted daily by the rangers at the visitor pier to get an idea of what to expect. Maybe will will find a sugar-daddy out there with a big satellite dome mounted in the top hamper of his big yacht where I can go begging for a real0-time update. Another thing to get when we win the lottery - that list is getting awfully long.

Cruiser clog

2009-03-29T07:34:00.001-07:00

We have pictures of the mooring field here in Boot Key Harbor, but without a wide angle or panoramic view shot, it is difficult to convey the density of the boat (over 90% sailboat) population here. So a shot of the dinghy dock gives an idea about that topic. This was an uncrowded day. There are hundreds of people living on hundreds of boats here, and this is in a down economy.

Mooring balls allow for closer spacing of boats than do simple anchoring grounds. The chaos that must have reigned here before the recent advent of the mooring ball field must have been nothing short of epic. Imagine yourself trying to find a spot to drop the hook not too far from or two close to neighbors in all directions of the compass. THEN you must be sure to set the anchor with the engines, and if you drag even a little doing this, you run the risk of getting too close to another boat and/or picking up somebody else's anchor. Then guess what happens to some boats when the winds shift and pull their anchors from the bottom? Yikes!

There was a lot of yelling by long-term squatters and others who paid no fee to have their boats here year-round when the city put the field in and started charging 21 bucks a day to moor to one, but the security of hanging onto a ball hooked up to a giant concrete weight on the bottom versus letting your own anchor corrode in the sea is certainly worth it.

This place tends to collect cruisers in a blood clot kind of way. They drift here with intentions of jumping off across the Gulf Stream to cruise the gin-clear waters of the Abacos or Exumas in the Bahama chain and then hang here as do drips of water on the end of a stalactite avoiding the forever last fall. Several have told us of being trapped here since December by the weather, but I wonder about that.

Cruising the Bahamas to me means few if any marinas with highly expensive and extremely limited pier space, little to no connectivity to the US unless you are willing to pay lots of money to BATELCO (a ripoff corporation run for the benefit of the well-connected in Bahamas), third-world level of living by the inhabitants who look at the rich cruisers with obvious envy, poor medical care if you get sick or injured, and no infrastructure. Fine for those who wish to hang out and do little other than swim and look at nice remote beaches and islets. Been there, done that, got really bored doing it.

Mary and I agree about one thing regarding cruising, and that is you have to CRUISE, i.e. MOVE. After a couple of days in any spot, we're really to hear the rumble of main engines beneath our feet taking us to the next destination. An old saying goes, "It's the journey, not the destination that is important."

We left the boat yesterday with no clear plan, and that's just what developed as we wandered over to a seaside restaurant after a late morning breakfast aboard and had pina coladas for lunch, well, a pre-lunch starter. Back to the dink, we motored across the harbor to the infamous Sombrero Marina Dockside Cafe for mid-afternoon hamburgers while we watched the denizens of this tropical reprobate haven drink their lunches and tell lies to each other. This place is a locals hang out and center of the Conch Republic-like opposition to the city of Marathon's harbor improvement efforts. It's one of this places you don't take pictures; you can just recall it in your mind's eye - sort of like the Wanchai District of Hong Kong or Olongapo in Subic Bay in 1968 at the height of the war.

Back to the dink dock again after a tour down Sister's Creek (the other outlet to the Atlantic) and then a bit of a walk up to Home Depot concluded our day ashore. There really is little to do here for active folks like ourselves unless we had our bikes ashore, and even then, there is nothing to really spark much interest ashore. Indeed, I had not planned to come here at all, but decided to do so when we realized that the Atlantic was going to be pretty rough for the required 36-mile run in it to Boca Chica Naval Air Facility Marina. I thought two days here would be enough to see the winds die off a bit, but it turns out the big change we are looking for will be tomorrow. We signed up for two days and then two days later, after further weather review, added two more for a total of four. It was always too much hassle to ferry the bikes ashore for two days. Had I realized we were going to be here this long, I am sure I would have gone through the bike-ferry drill.

So now we can say we have "done" Boot Key Harbor and hopefully are done with it. On to more interesting places.

Tomorrow will hopefully see us leave this place and get to the Key West area where we will have a pier berth with power and a rental car.

More daze at Marathon

2009-03-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Friday was a leisurely day here in Boot Key Harbor. I got an email from another member of the Trawlers and Trawlering email list who happened to note our arrival notice I had posted the day before. We ran over there to their buoy on the way in to shore this afternoon and met the crew of the motor-sailer Outer Reef. They have been here eleven days waiting for better weather to allow them to cross the Gulf Stream for a visit to the Exumas in the Bahamas. We may get with them another day for a meal - they have a rental car; thus, they are indeed cool.

We went ashore to walk the mile or so to K-Mart and Publix and to find a meal along the way. The Cracked Conch Cafe turned out to be a winner. I had cracked conch with the whole animal beaten flat and fried rather than the fried strips I usually get in the Bahamas - good.

Before we left the boat, I spent some time on the phone with the Garmin techie about how I could get my new radar to do contact tracking for anti-collision purposes (it's called MARPA in the maritime community). Back when I first entered the Fleet, we used a grease pencil, tongue depressor, and the sweep second hand of the bridge clock to calculate a contact's course, speed and closest point of approach to us right on the radar plotter face. Later I was aboard a more modern ship with the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), which, with inputs from guys on radar screens in CIC, would do this calculations using a room full of computers. Now all this is done with the MARPA software in little bitty radars like the one I have.

When I tried to use the radar's cursor to acquire a contact and "do MARPA stuff" to it one day on the way here, I got an error telling me the unit needed heading sensor input to do the tracking. Well, I thought, I have a fluxgate compass on the boat which I use to double check the old fashion floating card compasses with, and it has output wires which have never had anything to send information to before

So I broke out the manual on the fluxgate compass while I had the tech on the line and read him off the function of each wire coming out of the compass. He said to grab this extra cable that came with the radar and plotter when I bought them and plug it into the back of the plotter and use two specifically colored wires of the fifteen dangling off the other end of it to connect to two specifically colored wires coming out of the compass and I'd be in bidness. And he was right. Next job is to get the AIS information input to the radar - work for another day.

During conversation with the tech, I discovered that the display part of the radar came loaded with pretty much all the navigation charts I need. I had not even bothered to look at the manual for the thing because I have been happy with my GPS-guided laptop navigation system. Nevertheless, I delved into the book (which is terribly inadequate) and played with the display to find out that yes, indeed, I do have a functioning chart plotter there with the capability of making and following routes on charts. I can even overlay the radar picture on the chart or display a split screen with radar and chart plotter sharing the screen.

I still prefer my laptop chart system because it is much easier to manipulate, but I will definitely make use of the radar /chart overlay and split screens on the Garmin plotter display.

I decided to NOT put up with any more oil in the port engine drip pan from the leaky valve cover gasket - even for the few hours of running time before I get a new gasket delivered by Fedex in Boca Chica on Tuesday. I cleaned the several inches of leaky area up with alcohol and smeared on some hard-setting Prematex.

As it did last night, the wind is howling outside and making us yaw about on our shyort tether like a drunken sailor. The weather is predicted to change dramatically for the better on Monday, which is when we will make a run for Boca Chica. We will likely remain there four four or five days doing some sightseeing in a rental car and fixing the oil leak (again).

Welcome to the Keys

2009-03-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Boot Key Harbor in the city of Marathon (itself located on Vaca Key) at about 1430 today after a reasonably easy passage across windswept Florida Bay.

We had to wander about the mooring field just a bit to find our assigned buoy amongst the hundreds of buoys and vessels here. I like the mooring arrangement which has a small float attached to the substantial mooring line. The line is about ten feet long and has a large nylon thimble (hard eye) spliced into its end. After you get to the dock master's office for check-in, they give you a sheet with several recommended methods of attaching to the thimble, but I observed what several boats around us did and copied that. What is done is to run two independent lines through the thing from each closed chock (hawse holes to some), through the thimble and then doubled back aboard so you end up with four lengths of line going to and from the eye. If you just run a single line out through the thimble, you end up getting the line sawing back and forth through it. this way, there is no sawing action.

We went ashore and walked across Ocean Highway to the keys Fishery Restaurant, which is an open air affair overlooking Florida Bay where you order and the window and give them your favorite TV show which they use to announce your food ready to pickup. I gave them Dancing With The Stars for Mary. I noticed the table next to us with two little girls used Dora.

We then found a convenience store to get some needed groceries before returning to the dinghy dock. A harbor tour followed with interesting boats and homes and waterfront establishments to view.

Sunset saw the usual Keys celebration of the event with conch shells being tooted here and there. A lot of laughter emanated from the boat next door as a wannabe conch artist just couldn't seem to get a decent toot out of the object.

We have elected to remain here until Saturday watching the weather to decide about the 36-mile run in the Atlantic to Boca Chica. The few miles we did in it getting into this harbor were fairly rough.

2009-03-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Been out of touch for a few days. Here is some catch up reading.

Tuesday 24 March 2009
We left the Everglades City area this AM for Little Shark River not because the weather predictions are any better, but rather because the arrival of a large boat club with prior reservations forced us out to Russell passage anchorage with 11 other boats. We got up early and got u/w as dawn broke. Had we known there were NO crab pots out here, we might have gone earlier. Winds are still predicted from the NNE at 20 knots, but we have noticed what seemed to be a slack period before noon. With our track to Little Snake River being only 3-5 miles offshore, we are experiencing only the annoying 1-2 foot wind waves on the beam jolting us about in the mid-morning with two hours left to go.

Everglades City was fun for a day or two as we biked about from our position alongside the Rod and Gun Club seawall.

The R&G Club itself has a long ways to go in the management of their seawall moorings. About ten cruising sized boats can fit comfortably alongside, and clubs from the Sarasota area south like to come down here during to cool no-bug months of March/ April. What with being a bit isolated, the R&G Club is a bit prone to having clubs show up on a "flexible" schedule; although the two clubs we saw showed up on time. Anyway, the staff there works three shifts and the pass-down is not very good between shifts. They do not monitor a radio, and there was nobody to assist in mooring when we showed up (that doesn't bother me because I hate dock hands pulling and pushing when I have control of my own boat). We ended up extending our stay by two nights and when the second club showed up (we were not informed of this reservation) we were asked to vacate and told to talk to the other shift about a refund for the last night. Being immediately out of reliable cell contact the moment we left town, I will now rely on the US Mail to carry my request for refund.

Before we vacated our spot, we were offered a temporary spot with no power and told we could remain there if they could not fit us into a powered spot after the boat club got settled. After getting two 42-foot boats moved to this location (it was high tide - the ONLY time to move a 4.5-foot draft boat around), I sounded around and found that we had about 6 inches under us, and there was going to be a 2-foot fall on water level as the tide fell lower in the next few hours. We had no time to dicker and promptly left for anchorage six miles away.

I am not pissed off or trying to paint a negative picture of the R$G Club (but don't eat there). We'll use them again if we ever pass this way again (you have to - they are the only mooring in town, anchorage is way off downstream), but you need to be prepared to deal with a "marina" way down the list from something like Marina Jack in Sarasota. It's part of their charm. It appears that if we had been able to predict our travels and made reservations before the boat clubs (over two months ago) we would have had prior claim to our spot, no matter how many boat clubs came in.

As for us, we are just as happy to be able to move on safely despite running through an area with small craft warnings. Our run to Little Shark River took about 5 hours, and we went about a mile and a half upstream to find a spot to drop the anchor. The tide was running in at the time but the wind was pushing us in the other direction. We put the clutches in neutral and let the two forces of nature figure out what they wanted to do with us. Then we turned the bow in the opposite direction from which we were moving and let go the anchor. We waited until the tide and wind were in the same direction to assess how well the anchor was going to hold us.

Another plus is the lack of mosquitoes and other noxious animal of the flying sort. This is a complete anomaly working in our favor, given what I have heard of the area from others.

We are miles away from ANYTHING, yet we get these small fishing boats flying by us from time to time. No roads show anywhere within miles of us on our state road maps, but here they are.

Mary is NOT happy that we have perforce landed in a place with NO connection to the outside world via cell phone. To get to “civilization,” she is willing to face the uncomfortable and possibly hazardous 20-knot winds predicted for the very open waters we must transit for 51 miles to get to the next destination (the Keys). I am not so sanguine about the prospect.

I spent about four hours in the afternoon tracking down and repairing the problem with my air horns; they had stopped working altogether after gradually getting crankier and crankier about doing their jobs. The culprit turned out to be the relay that somebody talked me into installing about twenty years ago. I took it apart and had Mary hold one end of a long thin piece of 400-grit sandpaper while I held the other. We sawed it back and forth across the contacts to shine them up. I bit of “adjustment” of the contact gap with my Leatherman and we were back in business. There was a lot of horn blowing out there in the wilderness as I ran various tests.

I finally decided to get on the radio to see if anybody else was in the area besides the two uncommunicative sailboats we had seen at the river’s mouth and was rewarded with an answer from a powered catamaran named Mega Marine, which had gone up another branch of the river just astern of us. During the ensuing conversation, he asked me if we were the ones blowing a horn at him – it had alarmed some of his crew making them think they might be standing into danger. We had not even seen them turn up that branch because we were below and busy.

Night finally descended upon us, and we were rewarded with the eerie silence of a moonless night in a narrow river. The occasional loud splash made us realize there are other animate objects out there in the dark.

Wednesday 25 March 2009
We remained at anchorage in the Little Shark River with me worried about subjecting Mary and the boat to bad weather (winds continue at 20 knots over Florida Bay) and her worried about what might be happening with her family and that they might worry over us. After my talk with the Mega Marine last night she had asked me to get them to relay a status message to Phillip on their way to Marathon. She was just getting ready to press the issue when the Mega Marine popped around the bend in the river headed downstream. They kindly took the message.

I decided to use the time sitting at anchor wisely and broke out my sander and varnish to work on some external spots in need of help. As I was finishing around noon, I noticed that after the most recent tide shift, our anchor had been deposited a good distance from where I had left it the day before. I thing the bight of chain hanging in the water between the bow roller and the ¾-inch snubber line hook had caught the anchor buoy (with heavy retrieving line) and dragged the anchor.

Since Mary wanted a change of scenery and I was considering getting underway early in the morning calm for the Keys, I decided to up anchor and head for the mouth of the river for overnight anchorage. Once there, however, I was less than impressed with the area and the threat of reversing currents to the security of the anchor. Looking out toward open water, I noticed the strong easterly wind had left a calm area o the western shores of Cape Sable and elected to snuggle up close to the coastline for the night.

As we were slowly exiting the river mouth I began to notice a repetitive squeak-like noise. It was nearly subliminal, but it was there. Had I heard it before? Was it shaft-related or engine-related? Slowing one engine and then the other revealed the noise to be from the port side. Placing the port engine in neutral and then revving it disclosed the noise was engine-related.

Close inspection of the running engine revealed the noise was in the area of the fan belt and that there was antifreeze droplets hanging off the expansion tank over the belt. I think I was hearing the belt squeaking because it was being wetted. The coolant leak was from the bass of the radiator cap neck. I added this neck (a recommended modernization of this engine) years ago as a means of enabling the addition of a coolant recovery bottle just like automobiles and truck have. The epoxy glue used in the installation was cracked and leaking. I cleaned up the area around the filler neck base and gooped on a bunch of JB Weld, a probably better type of glue. Six hours latter it should be good to go.

The final repair of the slight oil leak from that same engine’s valve cover gasket will have to wait until we arrive in Boca Chica where I will have American Diesel FEDEX a new gasket. For now a couple of rags in the drip pan soak up what little escapes.

Thursday 26 March 2009
We got up early this morning and got underway for the Keys at 0640. The wind howled a bit during the night making me think the trip was going to be ugly. So before we rounded the end of Cape Sable where the winds would have a long fetch to work up some nasty waves, we ensured we have breakfast cleared away and all windows shut.

Despite the 20-knot winds, the voyage across Florida Bay turned out to be surprosingly smooth. Mind you, it was not calm, and I am ever thankful for the RainX I applied to the forward cabin windows a couple weeks back because we got a lot of spray.

Our biggest concerns were shallow water and crab pots. The pots were hard to see looking up sun in the choppy water, and running along in water less than two feet under the keel for a few miles was indeed nerver wracking.

The port engine tested fine this morning, and the radiator cap neck reseal job appears to be a permanent fix. Turns out my ear is well tuned to the goings on below decks because if I had not heard that slight squeak and not gotten curious, the outcome would have been an overheated engine.

For now we are slipping along in the aqua-marine hued waters of the Keys intending to moor at a mooring ball in Marathon in about two hours.

Stuck near muck

2009-03-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

We are stuck near the Big Muck (everglades), held up by weather as it were. The long predicted strong northerly winds have finally overtaken us, but at least we are in a well protected haven here in Everglades City. Even so, the wind is literally whistling through the rigging of the mast, thin lines playing the high notes to the lower counterpoint of thicker things like the mast.

The bad part, as far as Mary is concerned is that she has no car (!!), and there is little likelihood Enterprise will bring one from Naples, 35 miles distant. I tell her that the enforced idleness is good for her and that she can catch up on her knitting. It's a darned good thing we didn't get to the electronic wilderness of the Little Shark River where her cell phone would have been useless and internet access is non-existent. Right now she is sitting contentedly at the other laptop cruising through items of interest to her on the internet.

For our major activity today, somebody had the bright idea of riding bicycles to the historic Smallwood trading post four miles away in a burg called Chokolsokee. It was connected to the rest of the world in 1955 by a three-mile long causeway, and if it hadn't been for the thin curtain of mangroves on either side of the road, we'd have been blown over by the winds. The town itself appears to be sustained by a series of condominium RV/travel trailer courts. We were told waterfront RV lots can go for $400,000 over there (with accompanying condo fees of around $800 per quarter) - go figure.

We toured the old trading post set up by Mr. Smallwood about a hundred years ago to trade with the Seminoles. The place was chock full of period items, and the man in charge was quite a talker. He and Mary engaged in a lot of talk about old time patent medicine cures, and he would open old bottles of the stuff to give us a whiff. Smells, being very evocative, brought back instant memories.

To fortify ourselves for the return ride, we stopped off for lunch at a Cuban cafe and then celebrated our successful return to Everglades City with a stop at the Everglades Scoop for some well-deserved ice cream - it's tough being on vacation, but somebody's got to do it. :)

We returned to the seawall at the Rod and Gun Club to find a 36-foot Grand Banks, the Great Idea, moored there. I wandered over there to introduce myself with the intention of inquiring as to which direction they had come from and what water conditions they had experienced. It turns out they had been at anchor "around the bend a few miles" in Russell Passage and had come over here because the winds were making them uncomfortable about being anchored out.

We were told at check-in by the desk person at the Rod and Gun Club that we would have to vacate by tomorrow PM because the Sarasota Boat Club had the whole seawall reserved, and I so informed the crew of the Great Idea, a couple from New Hampshire who keep their boat in Florida. Upon being informed that they had been told no such thing at check-in, I marched over to the office and extended our stay two days. Otherwise, we'd have had to go anchor some place out in the Ten Thousand Islands waiting for the winds to abate. It seems nobody in charge at the Rod and Gun Club now has any exprectation the Sarasotans will plow through stormy seas to make their schedule.

The winds do bring dry and coolish air to this neck of the woods, meaning we don't need air conditioning, AND there are no bugs. Nada, zip, zilch, none - hard to believe. Must be the captain's prescient planning and general all around handsomeness....

As it is, we have high winds predicted for a day or two more and uncomfortable wind speeds and directions into the foreseeable future after that. We may be faced with a small pounding Tuesday afternoon IF we head for Little Shark River. Running close to the coast to avoid some wind-generated waves may not be doable for the simple reason that the already shallow areas may be too shallow for us to run in due to the wind blowing the water out of Florida Bay. If it looks really ugly, we'll seek a sheltered anchorage for another day or two.

Meanwhile, we cope as best we can.

Runnin' through the bog in the Everglades

2009-03-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Everglades City at the Rod and Gun Club quay, there being no slips as such, and moored about 1340 after splashing our way around Cape Romano. We are happy to find good cell and air card coverage (Verizon). No TV cable service is provided at the pier, and there is only fuzzy over-the-air TV from Miami.

The R&G Club dates back over a hundred years and its interior is all dark, varnished wood and hung with guns and trophies both aquatic and terrestrial.

We "spoke" a north-bound 34-foot trawler with 3.5 ft draft this AM, and they reported failure to get into Everglades City due to grounding. They stated that it was a low tide. We brought our 4.5 foot draft Calypso in here at high tide today (+2.25 feet) and saw really shallow water at marker 17 only, and that was about 2 feet under us. We carefully adjusted the Humminbird depth sounder to read depth under the deepest part of the boat using a lead line before we got into the channel; so our readings were within inches. Where the guide book saw shallow water between markers 27 and 29, we saw minimum 4 feet under our keel.

We rode our bikes all over town, and there are a ton of smallish eating establishments. The Rod and Gun Club is not on my list due to pricing.

There is one small market store for essentials, and I found a fuse and some butt connectors I wanted at the True Value hardware a quarter mile north from the market.

It is evident from a couple of people I spoke with that this place folds up in the summer. It seems a number of the workers and business owners are seasonal in their presence here.
One business owner pointed out a very fine looking piece of property across a branch of the river complete with many newly planted palms and boat slips. It is a high-end RV camp. Lots go for $600,000.00 and slips for a 32-foot boat would be around 300K. Only class 1 RVs under two years of age are accepted. Maybe some people are not affected by either the economy or good sense.

We will sit out the coming frontal passage here and will sail with the tide about noon on Sunday. We will probably exit this 6-8 mile long channel and poke our nose into Florida Bay to "test the waters" before deciding to mosey on down the road. If conditions are poor, we will reenter the channel and pick up an anchorage about a half mile in. We cannot come back here to the quay because the Sarasota Boat Club has the whole place reserved. However, with the windy predictions, they might be wise to cancel.

Where the ELITE meet to eat

2009-03-20T04:49:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, did we ever feel like raggedy vagabonds last night! We entered Gordon Pass and took Claiborne Young's first suggested anchorage off the channel. It turns out we wandered through some of the plushest neighborhoods we have EVER seen. We ended up anchoring in a cul-de-sac about 150-200 yards wide in late afternoon as the rich folk were taking the evening air on their back lawns and patios. This has to be the place where the Fortune 500 executives came to retire starting in about the 80's or later. The evening was blissful with no insects (they wouldn't DARE disturb these folks) and no need for air conditioning and the resultant generator noise. We were as quiet as church mice and stole out of Dodge in the pre-dawn light.

I saw my first-ever tarpon rolling in the water around the boat as it fed, and I pointed it out to a nearby fishing boat. They had no luck that I could see.

As I type, the sun is coming up, and we are rolling along at 8.5 knots with a long, slow swell of about 2 feet astern providing an easy ride.

The heavy winds out of the north are still predicted for tonight and the following days, but with any luck we will be at Everglades City by 1330 this afternoon. If the weather predictions come true, we may learn lots about that place.

We continue to be quite alone as the only trawler around. We see other boats out in various pursuits upon the great waters, but none seem bound upon a journey. This is NOT a complaint, but one wonders if it is the economy, time of season (with most voyaging trawlers crawling up the east coast), or what?

We have been seeing lines of crab pot floats at an acute angle to the coast about every half mile or so making them relatively easy to dodge. It is understood that once in Florida Bay, they will be MUCH thicker.

Pyrates!!

2009-03-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, by golly, there is a pirate ship a'winterin' the season hereabouts. Her name is Pieces of Eight, and she operates out of Salty Sam's Marina in Estero Sound. So beware as ye enter Matanzas Pass.

Calypso departed Legacy Harbour Marina at 0805 this ayem and headed down the Caloosahatchee River at out briefly into the Gulf at Punta Rassa, where the old crackers used to load cattle onto ships bound for Cuba.

While in Fort Myers, we enjoyed our walk to the Thomas Edison - Henry Ford Winter Homes Estate and spent much of the day there, returning to the boat via a nearby Publix. A short walk to The Morgan Restaurant in the downtown district finished us for the day. Given the kind of rainy weather we were having in Fort Myers and the crummy forecast, I might have elected to remain at Legacy Marina, but our underwater corrosion control system's meter was showing unacceptable readings in the red zone, and I was uncomfortable remaining. As it turns out, the decision was a good one because we are having fine weather on our run toward Naples.

After a couple of miles, we turned eastward into Matanzas Pass and found the channel is NOT exactly where the chart shows it; however, adhering to the buoyed channel got us through. Estero Sound is the body of water forming the harbor of Fort Myers Beach, and our objective, Ballard Oil deep in the environs of the sound was most helpful and hospitable as we took on 235 gallons of diesel at 1.899 (tax, tag, and title). That amount of full weighed us down an additional 1786 pounds. Giving is a grand total liquid load of 7,008 pounds. That should keep is from much bouncing around in open waters.

After refueling, we eased on down the channel about another quarter mile to Salty Sam's Marina where they gave us a temporary slip while we went into their Parrot Key Caribbean Cafe for lunch and then walked a mile and back to a convenience store.

Underway again found us out on the Gulf at about 1430 with the Pieces of Eight off pour port bow coasting along toward Matanzas Pass to offload her passengers. We "strafed" them with our loud-hailer as we went by crying Arrrrrr and avast and standby for a broadside. They waved and laughed - how humiliating. I should have had Mary wave the ship's cutlass ( a 15-inch used butcher house knife) at them, but she is busy using it to cut up a fresh pineapple - how humiliating for such a fine weapon of war.

It's a pretty clear day with dry air about 77 F blowing in one door and out the other. The seas at one foot are not noticeable, and the tall condo buildings stretch off into the southeast ahead of us until they sink below the horizon. We are almost three miles off shore and still only have 17 feet under the keel.

Unfortunately, the marine weather forecast for Friday and the following few days is kind of grim with winds in the twenty-knot region and 4-6 foot seas. We will likely be required to remain in protected waters for that time. That means staying in the Naples area (our present destination) or maybe sliding down a few miles farther southward through the inside passage from Naples to Marco Island. We will look at that possibility tomorrow if it appears to be too rough outside.

If we find the waters off the coast acceptable tomorrow, we may opt to run the almost 60 miles to Everglades City, which is around the bend of Cape Romano and sheltered from the expected strong northerly winds. The short term weather forecast will be our guide.

My quick resealing of the port engine valve cover seems to be working fine. No more oily smoke.

MOVING Day

2009-03-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

My original plan of movement had us at anchor tonight some where in Charlotte Harbor not far from Fort Myers, but we have elected to go to Fort Myers "all the way in one play" today. That required a pre-dawn departure of about 0700.

Many of the people who read this realize that the admiral of this barge is NOT an early morning person, but luckily the winds were calm and the tide at a stand meaning no extra assistance was needed for the deckhand to get the water hose , and cable TV cable, and power cords, and six mooring lines aboard in time for a 0705 departure form Marina Jack in Sarasota. The admiral was informed shortly before engine start to avoid any unhappy repercussions as a result of sudden unexpected rumblings rumblings.

Our new radar was of assistance in guiding us clear of the marina. After which we encountered a number of manatee zones where slow speed was required.

After a couple of hours and several bridges, two of which had to be raised or swung clear for us to pass, we entered Venice inlet and passed out into a very calm Gulf for a faster passage of 27 miles to Boca Grande, the entrance to Pine Island Sound and Charlotte Harbor. After the last bridge we raised all masts and antennas and should not have cause to lower them again for quite awhile.

At Boca we had 34 NM to go to get to Fort Myers.

A day like this (typing as we sail along) on the Gulf tempts me to just aim a bit to the southwest and go straight for Fort Jefferson, but we will continue to adhere loosely to our plan. If we get to Naples in a few days and find a salubrious prognostication, we may indeed wing it and go straight on out the 109 NM to Fort Jeff with a 0500 departure to ensure arrival in daylight. The current long range weather forecast does not look all that favorable for such a run.

We are in Pine Island Sound and have just passed between Useppa Island and Cabbage Key. Useppa is an invitation-only type of place with some famous names attached, and Cabbage has a restaurant and is open to the public. The Skinners and I anchored their Vendredi hereabout in 1992, and I had the hot duty of changing the attached fuel filters on but engines that night. The diesel fumes were nasty, and so was I by the time I was finished.

One of my regular checks of the engine room revealed a bit of oil smoke coming from the port engine valve cover gasket area. I pulled the cover this evening and found the cork gasket had bowed inward between the hold down screws allowing the oily smoke escape. I cleaned up around the gasket and clipped the sagging sections to the cover after putting some hardening Permatex in between to hold the gasket. Tomorrow I'll goop it up good with non-hardening Permatex and slap it together and hope for the best.

2009-03-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Ah, sailors, whatcha gonna do with 'em?

Today, we got lazy and slept in before biking off to breakfast. realizing we weren't going to ride bikes 4 miles each way on narrow sidewalks alongside busy Highway 41, we grabbed a cab and went out north of town to the Ringling compound. This is a fabulous asset willed to the state of Florida by John Ringling of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus fame.

On the estate are the wonderful Ringling Museum of Art, the Ringling mansion Ca d'Zan, the circus museum, and a miraculous model circus resulting from fifty years of effort by a modeler.

Dinner at a local seafood restaurant was followed by a return to the boat ("bak sheep" as we used to say to the cabbies in the Orient back in the day).

We will get underway at about 0700 tomorrow in an effort to get to Fort Myers before 1900 tomorrow night. Fort Myers is about 90 nautical miles distant. Doing the math at a guestimated average speed of 7 knots through all the bridges and slow speed zones means almost 13 hours underway. If conditions warrant (and i think they will), we will cut out of the Intracoastal Waterway at venice, 14 NM distant, and run 27 NM down the coast to the next entrance at Boca Grande. This move bypasses a lot of slow zones and shallow water and leaves us 34 miles to go to get to Legacy Marina in downtown Fort Myers. Our average speed my be closer to 8 knots going this way. We'll never be out of sight of land.

We'll see how it all shakes out and report later.

On to Sarasota

2009-03-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

We pried ourselves away from the Wright's pier this morning at about 0915 and arrived here at Marina Jack's in Sarasota about 1430 via the inside passage. It was a 20-gallon day as we covered 37 NM.

We got a chance to practice with our new Garmin radar in good clear weather where we could evaluate its performance. As it has its own GPS, I can now have the screen oriented to north as I was used to having from my Navy days where we had a gryo to keep everything properly oriented. We looked at several navigation markers and small boats at extremely close radar ranges as we passed them and are confident our new radar will be a very good "defogger."

North Tampa Bay we found the waterway narrow and heavily developed with lots of nice homes to look at as we passed by. Then we ran alongside the famous Sunshine Skyway spanning the bay for a while until we angled off tot the southwest in a bit of bumpy water as the southerly breeze threw some spray in our face.

Once across The Bulkhead shoal in the south end of the bay, we were back into calmer waters in Anna Maria Sound. The waters turned a very pale emerald, something I remember from my 1992 trip through here, truly beautiful. There were a lot of warning signs about manatees, but we have seen none.

After Longboat Pass, we entered much broader Sarasota Bay where that south wind began throwing more spray over the bow.

Here in Marina Jack's we have all the electricity and water we need plus cable TV. Mary is a happy camper. We did a load of laundry at the marina coin-operated laundromat and then had a meal in the marina restaurant.

Tomorrow we plan to get up to the Ringling mansion and art museum (free entry on Mondays!) and see what there is to see. I am trying to talk Mary into riding the 3.7 miles on bikes, but I think she is going to opt for taxi, rental car, or city bus.

While strolling along the pier, we noticed a boat named Light Heart, Jeff and Suzanne Wright's old boat. It is apparently on the market again as it has a for sale sign on it.

Sayonara New Good Friends

2009-03-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

Dija ever meet people who you had such instant rapport with that you get the impression you've know them forever? We 've had such a run of good luck, or is it just that "boat people" are so attuned to the world. Jeff and Suzanne Wright not only took us in like long lost relatives, they also invited Paul and Brenda Schlecter (also of the Trawlers and Trawlering email list) over so we could all mee for the first time. What a great gathering. We hope to see Paul and Brenda on the water in their refurbished troller soon.

Waiting on the Wright's pier for us was the radar part Claire and Pete Mallory and Autry Hazzard collaborated on getting to us. I can never thank you all enough for that effort. Unfortunately, the radar remained inoperable in the low range bands. I made the command decision to replace the radar with something new ASAP, and Jeff was Johnny-on-the-spot with phone numbers and transportation. Being Friday the 13th, it befell Jeff to suffer a flat tire while we were out shopping.

The new radar, a Garmin GMR 18HD interfaced with a Garmin 4208 display unit (get that, Jim and Jackie) was procured at a userous rate and installed by me over the last day and a half. Jeff thinks I may have saved a thousand buck doing it myself. This new unit came with a GPS head; so I went ahead and installed it giving us a grand total of three installed GPS units and one portable that can plug into this computer. I think that's enough to get us where we are going.

Speaking of which, as we turn our bow once again to the south, we intend to make Sarasota tomorrow, distant some 37 NM. It will not be an early rising day tomorrow. In our journey, we will travel the inside route, at one point paralleling the Skyline Bridge acrosss Tampa Bay before angling off toward the approaches to Sarasota Bay. We had a lot of time the other day and so poked along so slowly coming down from Tarpon Springs that we only burned 10 gallons of diesel in the 31 NM trip. That's far better that our usual mileage. We have 480 gallons remaining on board.

Tarpon Springs

2009-03-11T18:51:00.001-07:00

Today we rode our bicycles about a half mile to breakfast and 5 hours and 10.6 miles later we arrived at the boat in need of adult beverages. We didn't get lost, thanks to Mary's tourist road map of the area. The town of Tarpon Springs is a beautifully kept town similar in my mind to places like Naples, although probably not as opulent. We ran through many residential areas and saw some really picturesque waterfronts.

We visited a waterfront Greek restaurant tonight to be able to say we had Greek food in Tarpon Springs; or to avoid having to say we DIDN'T. Go figure.

John and Maxine Stewart (he is a fellow T&T member) of the tug Raven, moored alongside us, came down and visited this afternoon. We enjoyed their company and wished we'd had more time together; maybe on the way home...

Our radar problem wherein that wonderful device refuses to operate in the lower ranges below 12 miles was mostly not a real issue during our transit across the gulf because we were free of fog and saw only one contact all night - plus the sky was clear with a full moon. Being able to see zero miles out to 12. 24, or 36 miles is all well and good, but when you think you might have seen a brief blip at a shorter distance, you'd like to change the range scale down to 6, 3, 1.5, 0.5 or even a quarter mile scale to ensure there is nothing out there that could go "bump in the night." A couple of times I was sure I saw something at around 3 miles ahead on the radar screen for several scans only to have it disappear. At our 8 knot speed, that meant in 22.5 minutes whatever it was would be on top of us. Had I had a shorter range scale available, I could have "zoomed in" to keep a better eye on what turned out to be loons when the time ran down.

Talking with a radar tech here in Tarpon Springs yesterday left me with the impression that the problem with the radar is in the range switch on the box (called an indicator unit) next to the screen and not up in the radar antenna itself. Good news, because brother Jim shipped me his similar (not exact) model indicator unit some year or three back when he removed it from his boat. Bad news, because the indicator unit was resting on a shelf in my yard shed a few hundred miles back up our wake. Good news, because I have fabulous neighbors who have rallied to the cause when I got it into my punkin head that I had to have this radar working full bore and that that used indicator unit was a possible fix.

Our schedule calls for us to be visiting fellow T&T member Jeff Wright's pier tomorrow night in Treasure Island, about 30 miles south of here, and I figured if I could have somebody lay hands on the radar part and FEDEX it this morning to Jeff's we'd be set. But who to perform this task at nine o'clock at night? Enter, a fine set of neighbors.

Autrey Hazzard keeps our keys and collects mail for us when we get these crazy ideas about voyaging. She will tell you right off she is the wrong person to ask to find a heavy piece of electronics in the night in a dark yard shed, but Pete Mallory is not timid and as a fellow retired naval officer and boater, he also knows what a radar looks like. Together, they retrieved the shed key from the house and braved the hazards of my disorganized shed to get the radar into Pete's wife Claire's hands so she could FEDEX it this AM. Thank you all so much. I will report if we have any success.

Paul Schlecter, also of the T&T e-mail list, wrote and wishing to be able to meet us as we pass through the area, and Jeff and Suzanne Wright have graciously set up a dinner tomorrow evening when everybody's schedules mesh. We will get underway from this place before lunch in order to arrive at Treasure Island before 1530 tomorrow.

Crossing the Big Bend sans Sans Chibli

2009-03-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

Notes on crossing the Big Bend of Florida

We exited the pass at Dog Island between 1400 and 1430 and by 1500 had lost sight of land in the thin fog.

At 1500, the south wind is still creating a few white caps, and the southwesterly swell is coming at us at about 1-2 feet with an occasional 3-4 footer just to keep us on our toes. The ride is not uncomfortable with little roll and light pitching, and the boat tracks well into the seas on auto-pilot.

We are expecting a lot of moon and further calming of the seas as the night wears on. Our ETA off Anclote Key is around 0830 Tuesday.

The Sans Chiblis are manning their vessel on the flying bridge while we Calypsos prefer to remain below probably because the big bucks we spent a few years back on modifications have afforded us a very comfortable two-person elevated seat behind the lower station helm. The boat’s motion is amplified higher up and there is no climate control up there for when the night gets cold, as it will. Additionally, most of our alarms and other equipment, like radar are mounted below. I always tell people that I prefer to run the boat from the lower station, because that’s where the food is kept. I am sure we will be spending a lot of time up top later on as we traverse the confined waters of the ICW.

For now, Mary is asleep on the settee resting for whatever relief I will need during the night.

In the loose arrangement we have with the other boat, they have apparently decided to follow about a quarter mile astern of us. We have no other agreement except to start off together and stay within radio range. If they should breakdown or have some other trouble, there is little we could do but standby as moral support and energize our emergency locator, if we could not contact the Coast Guard on the radio. Should either boat go down, there is at least another one to swim toward. Anyway, being in the lead means I don’t have to sweat changing engine speed to match them. With their engines running at a reported 1729 RPM and ours at 1600 we paced each other perfectly yesterday. I don’t know what causes them to have to work harder to go my speed, maybe bottom smoothness – engines and props and probably trannies are identical.

At 1620, the Sans Chibli reported the lady of the boat, who wanted to try the crossing for the first time, is not faring well, and they are returning to port. We continue on alone with a point-of-no-return at about 2330 tonight. (A report from them a couple of days later said they had returned home to Gulf Breeze andwould drive to Fort Lauderdale to babysit their grand children).

About 1700, I backed off a hundred RPM to 1500 RPM to see what it would do to our ETA at a ;point off shore from Anclote Key, and the computer promptly told us it would slow us up from 0830 arrival to 0907 - big deal, but we’re saving a few gallons of fuel.

As the evening wears on, the winds have died off to calm, but we are still dealing with the 2-3 foot swell from the southwest, putting it on our starboard bow. Even so, we have only had two instances all day of spray coming over the bow.

Mary took the watch for a couple of hours before darkness fell, and then I sent her below to get some sleep about 2100. She will get another trick at the wheel a bit later on, but for now she is sleeping through the point-of-no-return.

At 2200 I was visited by a large pod of oceanic porpoise. They were smaller than the big guys we see off our pier and in the bay all the time. There was quite a crowd of them, and I played tag with them using the searchlight.

Up to midnight we have seen only one other vessel, and that was an AIS contact which first showed up on the computer and later on radar out at eight miles.

AT 0830 we anchored off the eastern side of Anclote Key and waited/slept/ate until 1230 for our slip at Tarpon Springs City Marina to clear. We are here in TS for two days. then on to visit with Jeff Wright.

Into the blue

2009-03-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

This is not us, rather, it is a shot of the Sans Chibli as we pulled into Apalachicola yesterday. Actually, they pulled in while Calypso and crew blew through town in a hurry to get the anchor down off the eastern end of St George Island in a place marked as "Pilot Harbor" before sunset in order to properly enjoy adult beverages.

As we dropped the hook, there was a light breeze off the Gulf which died away to dead calm later in the evening, and that bodes well for a calmed Gulf after yesterdays fairly brisk winds off the water. Air temperature was such that we were able to sleep without the generator-powered air conditioners running. With the flat calm waters we enjoyed near utter silence broken only by the faint whisper of the muffin fans in the propane-powered refrigerator cabinet. While out on deck giving our emergency locator's GPS receiver a test, I could faintly hear the surf on the other side of the island.

March 10th:
Heavy fog again this morning. Checked over a nice 78-degree engine room this AM, and find conditions as good or better after yesterdays hard-run 90 nautical miles than a little run around our own bay. We are ready for some serious cruisin' now.

We will turn on the marine VHF ship-to-ship radio later on today to listen for call of the Sans Chibli as she steams by after noon to pick us up as their buddy boat for crossing the next 130 nautical (150 statute) miles of open Gulf.

I have been this way a number of times, the first of which was in 1992 with my dearest friends Hank and Ruth Skinner and son Stanford. Their Vendredi was a boat powered, as is Calypso, by a pair of the honest and dependable Ford-Lehman 120 HP diesels. On that trip, we had little to no contact with the outside world in nearly this same spot where I sit typing away on the internet and perusing weather websites. Back then, we got maybe a scratchy voice on the marine VHF weather channel for Tallahassee giving vague information about sea states. We ended up leaving in 3-4 foot head seas and a brisk east wind. Rather than run that rolly boat to Tarpon Springs with a beam sea, we headed eastward 80 miles to Steinhatchee and went to Tarpon the next day in better conditions. I think fondly of Hank and Ruth, my surrogate parents, who fed both my body and soul during some tough times, often is I planned this trip for my own boat.

For those of you lubbers (NOT a pejorative term, just an acknowledgemant of your unfortunate lack of sea experience) out there, I leave you with this bit of verse from John Masefield. This is the way sailors feel about it WELL after experiencing some of the worst the sea can throw at you:

Sea-Fever

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
and the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's faceand a gray dawn breaking.
I must go down to the sea again,
for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the sea again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trek's over.

With our small vessel, we certainly hope for no such wild but will certainly sleep well tomorrow, but you get the idea.

Well, lunch is finished and here comes the Sans Chibli down the channel, and it's time to go.

Will write more from the "other side."

Dear Pier

2009-03-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

We leave you in a fog and to the tender mercies of the elements until our return. We will miss your surrounding pilings and vinyl covering and ready fresh water and electricity. For some time now we will have to fend for ourselves as an independent entity. Rest well, for you labors will soon resume.

We got underway in heavy fog with a radar that would not work on anything under a twelve mile scale. Maybe I'll find somebody in SW Florida to repair it.

As I started this, we were just exiting Apalachicola, and now we are 4-5 miles farther on toward our proposed anchorage off St George Island. We had planned to go another few miles to Dog Island, but we can't get there before dark. Doesn't make an difference, since the pass we intend to exit into the Gulf is between Dog and St George Islands.

Were will have a "buddy boat" for tomorrow night's crossing(yes, the weather continues to look good). It will be a near-twin 1974 model Grand Banks 42 called Sans Chibli out of Gulf Breeze manned by a 76-year old couple. This is not his first crossing. They pulled out behind us from St Andrew Marina this morning, and we talked boats on the radio for miles. Sans Chibli will remain in Apalachicola tonight and fuel up in the morning before coming on the additional 20 miles to find us at our anchorage in the early afternoon.

They are going to Clearwater while we are going to Tarpon Springs. However, that won't prevent us from being within a mile or so of each other all night.

Last Minute Stuff

2009-03-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

Mary went to Chipley today to visit with family, and I took Mom to lunch and a quick run into Winn Dixie.

After a few more hours of cleaning and polishing, Mary dragged me away for granddaughter Emma's baton recital after which we went to dinner at Red Lobster with Meda and her.

It's late and we need to finish taking the last things, including this computer to the boat and make our bed so we can sleep aboard tonight and get underway at 0700 Central Daylight Time.

The Great Onload

2009-03-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

Sheesh! It's a lot of effort getting the boat out of the local, mostly ICW cruiser mode to coastal operations mode including crossing lots of open water. Our list of to-dos and go-buys is dwindling, and the waterline is at least and inch higher than it was a couple of days ago. I'm going to give the old boat a good bath tomorrow to clear off the last of the winter grime and work on polishing up the clear vinyl of the flying bridge enclosure so I can see where the heck we're going.

While the boat is relatively inactive, I keep a blind plug in the 2-inch through-hull where the depth sounder's speed and water temperature transducer fits because I don't want bio-fouling clogging the speed wheel. It's always a thrill of the negative kind to exchange the sensor for the plug, what with a head of three feet of water pushing through a 2-inch gaping hole in the bottom of the boat. Swapping as fast as I can, there is still a big ol' gout of water wetting me down for a second or so. Anyway, tis done so we'll have speed through the water as well as SOG from the GPS units.

Speaking of that miracle, GPS, what a wonder! Well do I remember being on the bridge of a destroyer one summer night in 1971 as we sneaked into the waters off the Vietnamese DMZ after a long ocean voyage with overcast preventing any celestial navigation. There was no electronic navigation other than iffy LORAN A, which was maybe good to within 5 miles. We ended up with an almost eight-mile error which had us running right into the large North Vietnamese coastal batteries on Tiger Island. Luckily, somebody discovered the error before the enemy did.

I am taking our computer router with us so we can have both laptops on line, if desired, giving Mary access to her email and other internet interests while the primary computer runs the chart plotting program, which will put us within a few feet of the arrival mark off Tarpon Springs on Tuesday morning.

Sail boaters would hate the weather forecast for Monday afternoon through Tuesday from Dog Island to Tarpon Springs; little to no wind (all on the nose) and 1-foot seas. Great trawler-crawler weather, though.

Once the idea of transiting the whole 90 NM to Dog Island in one day seized me, and it became clear that we would need to be leaving earlier Sunday than Mary's desired time of rising in the morning, she suggested we sleep aboard Saturday night. You see, Mary is well aware that I need no assistance in getting underway from our home slip, and you can guess the rest about where her "sea and anchor detail" station will be that day. This happened more than once while we were on our sojourn up the Tenn-Tom and Tennessee in 2006. You can see what sort of slave ship I run!

A Weather Window

2009-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

Several websites, including NOAA Maritime Weather, are starting to show a pause in the weather action as an expected front is delayed into the later half of next week leaving seas as low as 1-2 feet out 60 miles into the Gulf on Monday night. If things still look this good Saturday night, we will complete our clothing and food loadout and get underway Sunday morning for Dog Island or Carrabelle, which is just four miles up the river.

This will be a 90-mile run for the boat and a good shakedown after a lot of sitting around this winter. If we had been running the boat a lot recently, I'd simply exit the St Andrew Bay jetties here and just head for Anclote Key, but prudence dictates a long hard day for the engines and running gear followed by a thorough going-over before stepping out on a 130-nautical mile run across the Gulf. Hopefully, some time toward mid-day Monday, we will get underway and arrive off Anclote Key near Tarpon Springs at mid-morning Tuesday.

According to the Verizon coverage chart, we will have good contact and online service if we anchor off Dog Island instead of heading into Carrabelle for the night.

Stay tuned.

How not to do it

2009-03-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

As I busy myself with gathering up my charts and clearing out collected "stuff" from various lockers and cabinets on the boat so we can load it up for our trip, I am also aware of the unfolding events in the waters off Tampa where several men are still missing after their 21-foot boat was found overturned. While we will be passing through that area in a week or so, I want to assure the non-mariners looking in on this blog that there is no comparison between how those men went to sea and how we intend to conduct ourselves.

First and foremost, I will not subject us to sea conditions that would challenge Calypso's seaworthiness, as those men foolishly did with their small boat. A strong front had just passed or was passing through the area off Tampa creating very rough seas, and they decided to go out anyway - they challenged Mother Nature and lost. I am monitoring about five different weather and sea state websites to ensure as calm a passage as I can. If the water conditions I have pre-determined to accept are not met, we won't go into open water, period. That said, quite a lot of our trip will be in waters we could wade ashore in.

Secondarily, we are probably better equipped than that 21-footer off Tampa. When in open water, we have the inflatable dinghy ready for rapid deployment as a liferaft should we have to leave the Calypso. In the dinghy we have a water-proof box with flares and a hand-held marine transceiver. Most importantly, we have immediately at hand a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) which sends our exact position to the National Rescue Center via satellite within a couple of minutes of activation. Like having a lot of spare parts means you never seem to have to use them, I am confident I have "wasted" thousands of dollars on this emergency equipment. :)

A reason to go

2009-02-25T17:23:00.000-08:00

A small boy heard the ocean roar,
"There are secrets on my distant shore
But beware my child the ship's bell's wail,
Wait not too long to start to sail."

So quickly come and go the years
And a young adult stands abeach - with fears.
"Come on, come on," the ocean cussed,
"Time passes on, oh sail you must."

Now it's business in middle-aged prime
And maybe tomorrow there'll be time,
Now is too soon - it's raining today.
Gone, all gone - years are eaten away.

An old man looks out, still feeling the lure
Yet he'll suffer the pain than go for the cure.
The hair is white, the step's with care.

So all too soon the secrets are buried
Along with him and regrets he carried
And it's not for loss of secrets he cried
But rather because he'd never tried.

While the above is a bit more eloquent than my usual prosaic mode of speech, I have never found a more perfect description of a cruiser's wanderlust. So with due diligence, we are preparing the CALYPSO for another long trip (our last being in 2006 when we traveled 2400 miles up and back from the headwaters of the Tennessee River). Just as it was in the Navy, the preparation phase is so time consuming and hectic that getting underway for the cruise is actually a relief.

This time, we plan a trip from our home port near Panama City across 150 miles of open water to the western coast of Florida and thence down the coast to Key West after which we will run 70 miles into the Gulf of Mexico to our turn-around point at Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas wherein lies Fort Jefferson National Monument. From Garden Key, we will run across 120 miles of open Gulf waters back to the peninsula of Florida at Naples from which point we will retrace our path homeward for a grand total of 1383 statute miles.

The fuel tanks have their full allotment of 660 gallons of diesel fuel, and the water tanks are freshened with 240 gallons of water. The lubricating oil in both main engines and the generator has been lab tested and found "acceptable for continued service." Main engine injection pumps and the transmissions have new oil. The generator has a newly rebuilt seawater cooling pump, and it and the main engines have new seawater pump impellers. So the mechanical aspects of a successful voyage should be covered.

A couple of new pieces of equipment will aid in providing added safety and comfort. We now have an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver which allows our navigation computers to automatically plot other nearby vessels with AIS transmitters (required on vessels over 300 tons) on our chart. We will thus be warned of the approach of any large vessels during our travels. Because we will be anchoring in a number of areas of open water, we now are the proud owners of a Magma brand "flopper stopper," which is two stainless steel plates hinged to each other and suspended several feet under water while hanging from a nine-foot pole. This device will greatly dampen the rapid rolling action we sometimes get in exposed anchorages.

Now, if my doctor and I can get my blood pressure under control, and the weather websites will show us a predicted calm period for the Florida Big Bend, we will be off and running after the first week of March 2009.