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
For family and friends wishing to keep up with us, we offer this blog as a simple means of voluntarily doing so.
And fini for the Miss Patricia
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