Finally, underway

 

Thursday New Year’s Eve 2020/2021 Near Red Sulphur Springs, TN

We took the forecast for mild but overcast weather for today at face value and got underway at 0715.  Being only three miles from the Wheeler Lock and Dam, I called the lock master on the phone at 0530, and he suggested that we be approaching the lock around 0730 because he had a tug locking through at sunrise.  After a few minutes of standby, we saw the gate begin to open, and soon the red flashing light changed to flashing green indicating the all-clear for us to enter.  We donned our inflatable life vests, and I made sure my knife was on my belt and the handheld VHF radio was on my life vest.  We turned on our intercom headsets and idled into the lock slowing closing within a foot of the wall until we were opposite one of the floating bollards inset into the concrete wall at which point I stopped the boat and Mary lassoed the bollard with the loop of line we had prepared with the line running through several feet of clear vinyl hose.

Being lowered in a lock is much less turbulent that being raised, and soon we stopped going down, and the lock gates ahead of us began their slow opening sequence.  Then the horn sounded indicating we were free to proceed out the lock.

While running the 15-plus miles to Wilson Lock, I ran the RPM on both engines up to 2700 not a really stressful level for them, but enough to work them a bit.  After 15 minutes or so, the carbon monoxide (CO) alarm in the bedroom aft alarmed.  This was more or less expected as it had happened when Frank was given a test ride in the boat before he bought it.  I looked it up on the Gibson owner’s page on Facebook, and some guys had taped up the joints in the aft sliding glass doors to eliminate the CO problem.  I took some painter’s tape I had purchased for this occasion and began taping the door when the CO detector I had brought along and placed at the helm also went off.  This was cause to slow down to reduce the “station wagon effect” of the exhaust rolling up onto the aft deck and to open some windows.  With the outside temperature at 47F, this was not a popular move for the entire crew.  Once the tape job was completed, a second test resulted in no CO alarms.

Wilson Lock was basically a rinse and repeat of the Wheeler lock, and I was pleased to be greeted by a small, barge-less tug waiting to lock up when the doors opened.  We have often waited for tugs because they have priority at locks.

We mostly had the river to ourselves on this gloomy day, but we began to see barge taffic headed upriver as we neared the turnoff into the Tom Bigbee Waterway.

I began calling on radio and cell phone as we got close to Aqua Harbor Marina, but never got an answer; so we eased in and tied up near the fuel dock and connected to shore power to await developments.  Nobody we spoke to is sure about when the workers here will return to work with guesses ranging from tomorrow to the next day, Saturday. 

At least we are off the broader waters of the Tennessee with this houseboat and have little concern from here on out about wind conditions.

Used 90 gallons of gasoline on our 7-hour, 63-mile run today and need to refuel before we can press on.

I received an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party two piers over, but I told the nice gentleman that we had been as careful as we could be about exposure to other people since the covid pandemic started and with a vaccine right around the corner, we were not about to get careless now, and it is COLD out there.

 

Coming up, a 141-foot drop!

Wednesday 30 December 2020 Joe Wheel State Park Marina

Yesterday, we turned in the U-Haul truck, and the bill was $5340, juuuust a leeetle over the $445 it was supposed to be.  It took overnight to correct the error, but it certainly tested my steam pressure relief valve.  It seems that when the 10-foot box truck I was supposed to get in Panama City was dead-lined and they gave me the bigger 15-footer, the initial mileage from the 10-footer, which was 14,000 miles LESS than the larger truck.  When it came time to deal with the extra mileage charge at forty cents a mile; well, you can do the math….

Because we expected to be here until Saturday due to adverse weather, we rented a car from Enterprise yesterday, but we ended up turning it back in today because we appear to have a short weather window tomorrow which should see us safely through the Wheeler and Wilson lock and into the top of the Tom Bigbee Waterway at Safe Harbor Aqua Marina before it gets stormy Thursday night.  Time will tell.  Hope to be writing how boringly successful tomorrow was this time tomorrow night.

One of today’s accomplishments was the buying and installing (if you call double sided tape installing) two automobile dash compasses, one on the flying bridge console, and one at the lower helm.  Hard to believe there has never been a compass on this boat.  I will give them a sanity check using the laptop chart plotter.

We plan to transit the Wheeler Dam lock (48-foot drop) and the Wilson Dam lock (93-foot drop) for a total drop of 141 feet by around lunch time if all works according to plan.  The Wheeler Lock is just around the corner about three miles away; so how well we can get this floating box to behave in the williwaws blowing through the lock will be very quickly determined.  The ten locks after these first two will drop us a further 250 feet for a grand total of 391 feet.  I think I feel my ears popping. 

Delivery crew drudgery and wort fear, delay

 Monday 28 December 2020 Wheeler State Park

We arrived at 2:30 PM yesterday after flogging the poor U-Haul truck to the max and spent an hour and a half with Scott the previous owner getting a run down on all the systems of this houseboat.  The most striking aspect of the electrical system is that there is no 12-Volt breaker panel.  The major 12-Volt consumers like the refrigerator and the Vacuflush toilet are wired directly to a fused panel in the engine room, and largely because of that reefer running on only 12 Volts, the battery switches are commonly left on such that the starboard engine is running in parallel with the generator battery and the house bank.  The only way to start the port engine if it has a weak or dead battery is through the use of a set of jumper cables.

Scott de-winterized the freshwater system, and we filled the hundred-gallon tank. 

After Scott left, we set off to the local Foodland in Rogersville, AL to stock up.

I sticked the tanks with the calibrated dipstick and found them at 30 gallons port and 40 gallons starboard – each holds 120 gallons.  Today we arranged for a park ranger to come down to the fuel pumps and then moved the boat over there to take on 160 gallons more gasoline to top off.  The boat responds well to the clutches and rudders and slow maneuvering speeds.  There was no wind making the reentry into the almost zero side clearance slip easy, but I can imagine the horror story if it were windy.

We worked well into the evening last night unloading the truck and finally quite out of sheer exhaustion pulling the hundred-pound four-wheeled steel dock wagon up the steep ramp to the parking lot and then straining to control its descent once loaded.  This morning I finished the task including the tremendously heavy Weber grill Frank sent along. 

After I cut the box open on the pier and removed the grill’s components, I had to get a fellow across the pier to help me lift and balance the heaviest part on the handrail of the boat while I ran around to the boarding gate and then forward to grab it and lower it to the deck.  I talked with Frank, and for now he wants it on the bow; so that is where I will assemble it tomorrow.  Then it will be on to setting up the forty-inch Tv he also sent with us.

Tonight, we journeyed twenty-five miles west it Florence, AL in our big box “car” to make a Wally World run, check out return transportation after tomorrow’s return, and to have dinner at Cracker Barrel.

When we got back to the boat, I was greeted with a nasty weather surprise when I brought up my favorite app, Windfinder on my laptop.  The front we had been planning to beat by getting to the top of the Tom Bigbee Waterway on Wednesday has accelerated closing out Wednesday with winds gusting to 36 MPH.  This shallow draft, slab-sided houseboat would be uncontrollable in a lock with winds like that howling and swirling through.

The next time the winds are at an acceptable speed and direction is Saturday.  Oh joy, a delivery crew’s worst nightmare, weathered in for days of delay.

Have Truck Will Travel

 

Saturday 26 December 2020 Southport, FL

As seems to be the norm when renting any kind of vehicle, the 10-foot U-Haul van I had ordered was not available due a mechanical problem, and I was issued a 15-foot van in its place, at the cost of the smaller van.  Five feet longer is not just 50% bigger; it is a LOT bigger.  When Frank and I placed all the bulkier and heavier items in the box, we had no need to stack any of them as there was plenty of floor space available.  The van came with a half tank of fuel, meaning I am only required to return half a tank with it.  I immediately ran to Sam’s and filled up taking 35 more gallons.  Big tank.

Now we are going after the checklist with abandon getting those last items packed and loaded.

Driving this monstrosity home, I quickly realized it is NOISY.  Thus, when I got home, I pulled out the two headset intercoms I build for use on our noisy boat and placed them in the truck’s cab.  We may well need them.

Mary has yet to select the sewing items she wants to take along.  Oh, and shoes….  Now I hope we have enough truck!

Scott, the seller called yesterday and arranged for me to call him when we get to Birmingham so that he can meet us at the boat in order to do a quick turn over and swapping out of the big electrical shore power cable adapters. he is keeping his for his next boat.

Weather forecasts in the area of our first few days of operation show relatively mild temperatures with no rain.  We hope to run south quickly to escape any really cold days.

0700 will be COLD tomorrow when we depart Southport for the 371-mile trip hoping to get to Rogersville, AL before dark.

A good survey etc.

 

Sunday 20 December 2020 Southport, FL

Frank emailed me a copy of the finished survey of the houseboat, and there were no priority one (safety) items requiring fixing before the boat can be operated.  Actually, there were no priority two items, and the boat ran 22 MPH at wide open throttle of 4400 RPM, right on the money.  Amongst the other recommendations, the surveyor offered up the ideas of placing drip pads under the engines, weighing the clear agent fire-fighting bottle, and adding smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, all easy-peasy items.  The survey is in the hands of a local insurance agent, and we now wait for the insurance binder for the final go-ahead.

The night before last, I received a small portable Automatic Information System (AIS) receiver which plugs into my laptop computers and displays approaching vessels, like tugs pushing gigantic barges, onto the river charts of my Coastal Explorer software.  In the past, without this AIS, we would come around bends in the river and be confronted with a tow (as we call tugs pushing barges) taking up the whole river, bank-to-bank.  Knowing the tows are there via the AIS icons displayed on our computers will allow us to call them by name and sort out the passing procedures ahead of time.  We first saw the value of AIS on the rivers when in 2017 a client had me install it onto the boat we were delivering from the Gulf to the Great Lakes, and for 87 bucks, this addition to my system seemed quite cost effective.  By the way, the clever but quite un-boaty name of the new receiver is dAISy spelled as you see it, no kidding.

Oh, and my DUH factor kicked into overdrive while trying to make the dAISy work - one mere click on a slightly obscure button (something I have doubtless passed over hundreds of times) in the Coastal Explorer would have saved me hours of frustration.  UGH!

We had a busy time yesterday and the day before with granddaughter Emma’s wedding which included us lugging two umbrella propane heaters and associated full propane tanks 17 miles out into the countryside to the drafty party barn where the reception was to take place.  After the wedding in town, we were flagged down by a threesome of granddaughters (cousins of the bride) with a ruined tire which ended up with me standing by the one who owned the car while all the others loaded into another family car and left for the party.  I spent the next several hours shepherding her through the tow truck and tire shop experience while missing the bulk of the party.  She got a liberal education into why she should have AAA and lug nuts which fit a lug wrench (long story), and of course Rich paid. 

This has to do with our houseboat delivery, how?  Well, are taking the day OFF and getting no work done in that direction done today.  We get into high gear tomorrow collecting the stuff around the house and checking it off the list as we pile it up in the spare room.

Spending Spree, whee!

 

17 December 2020 Southport, FL

This boating stuff is so much PHUN!  Frank has turned to with a will collecting all the equipment he wants us to load aboard for the trip.  He came over the other day while he was estimating a nearby dock job (BTW, his black lab is named Dock) and dropped off the company credit card, and by nightfall I had raided Harbor Freight and West Marine to the tune of about 560 bucks!  That’s on top of the 600 bucks of my own money I had paid to order three critical shore power cord adapters (seller keeping them). Yesterday, Frank showed up with a Weber gas grill new in the box (NIB) which weighs a ton.  I think I’m going to have to wheel it down the pier and open the box on the pier in order to load it piece by piece where I will assemble it.  He had a fully charged brand new 8-gallon propane tank with it.  Today he showed up with a second 100-foot 5/8” stern anchor rode with stainless thimble already spliced in (I had already bought and spliced one, but he is determined to have two), a NIB 40” TV, NIB blender, and NIB GIGANTIC toaster oven.  Tonight, he informed us he had bought towels and sheets and pillows for the boat.  I think the thrust of this outfitting became clearer to me when he mentioned that he intends to show up in Orange Beach at turn over with five or six adults to help him finish the voyage to Bay County.  Party barge anybody?  He informed me today that the survey went well with wide open throttle (WOT) achieving 4400 RPM running 22 MPH.  That is at the high end of the Crusader 7.4L WOT RPM range; so all seems well there.

Preparations continue and boat information rolls in

 12 December 2020 Southport, FL

Sadly, we still see the horrendous rampage of the Covid-19 pandemic going unchecked in our country because Americans will simply not take the well-publicized basic precautions; however, the first vials of the newly approved vaccine are being shipped this weekend.  Hopefully, by June 2021 most of us will be vaccinated with us older people getting or vaccinations by February.

As for Mary and me, we are fairly well isolated now and will be more so once we head out for the Tennessee River to pick up Mrs Patricia.

More email exchanges with Scott the seller have given us a better understanding of the boat’s equipment and operation.  He sent along .pdf versions of the manuals for the and the Crusader 7.4 liter V-8 engines and the 8-kilowatt Westerbeke generator.

Upon arrival at the park marina, the first thing we will have to deal with is the winterized freshwater system which means there is a pinkish colored antifreeze in the water lines.  It is not poisonous but will have to be flushed out.  The water heater is decommissioned and empty for the winter and bypassed; so all the valves involved in that decommissioning will have to be reopened and electric power supplied to the heater once we know it is full of water.

The fuel tanks are nearly empty, and the marina fuel dock is closed.  The information we have is a request for fuel made at the front desk of the nearby lodge will result in a ranger responding to the fuel dock.  We will probably be taking on nearly 200 gallons of gasoline.  Hopefully, we will be able to convince them to de-winterize their waste pump so we can empty the 100-gallon sewage tank which is currently about ¼ full.

Unique in my experience, the two 120-gallon fuel tanks are not connected which would allow the fuel load to be equalized of to use fuel from the opposite side of the boat if an engine were out of commission.  Nearly all diesel-powered boats have a leveling line with a valve at each end connecting the bottoms of the fuel tanks, but that arrangement with the much more dangerous gasoline where all fuel is drawn from the tops of the tanks via a long pipe sticking down into the tanks (standpipe).  I think Frank will eventually install a spark-protected fuel pump between the tops of the tanks to correct this deficiency.

We will be using a calibrated dowel rod to sound the aluminum gas tanks as we go along, but we will have to use a strong flashlight against the plastic freshwater and waste tanks.

The Mrs Patricia is not well equipped with installed navigation equipment.  It has a remotely operated spotlight, depth sound and a compass, but the GPS-based chartplotting will be provided by the two laptop computers we are bringing, each loaded with Coastal Explorer charting software, all the charts, and their own GPS antenna.  There is no radar nor Automatic Identification System equipment.  AIS would be helpful to identify the unseen towboats around the corners, but on the rivers with their mile markers about every 5-10 miles, navigation is not a complicated process.

On the housekeeping and comforts side of things, there as a smallish apartment-sized AC/DC refrigerator (meaning the battery system keeps it running when we are not plugged in to shore power), and an otherwise normal galley with sink, stove, microwave, etc.  There are three full-sized beds on the boat, two in a small guest room below the forward part of the cabin, and one all the way aft in the “master” cabin arear where the head with shower stall, vanity, and commode are.

Most of our piloting will probably be accomplished at the lower helm behind the big forward windows which look out over a covered forward deck, but there is a flying bridge which we may need from time to time such as when entering a lock or marina.

Between now and departure from home on the day after Christmas, we have a granddaughter Emma’s wedding here in our area on 19 December.  We are providing the heat at the barn-sized reception venue with a couple of large umbrella-like propane heaters we bought at SAM’s Club.  It’s a good thing we will have daughter Lynn and husband along with her large sized teenaged son Alex here to help with transporting the heaters and propane tanks back and forth.  Social distancing and masks will be in effect.

Meanwhile, we are collecting items need for this vessel delivery even though the purchase will not be complete until both in-water and out-of-water surveys are completed with satisfactory results.  The in-water part has probably been done, and the out-of-water survey will happen on Tuesday, 15 December.  As we have considered the large pile of gear involved in equipping this bare boat (possibly including a 40-inch TV and two anchors), we came to the expensive conclusion that a “premium” sized SUV (Suburban) will be required to get us to the boat.

The makings of another delivery job

 

10 December 2020 Southport, FL

This section of Cruisin’ Through will describe the delivery of the 44-foot Gibson houseboat Miss Patricia from the marina at Joe Wheeler State Park, AL along the north shore of Wheeler Lake, a part of the Tennessee River west of Huntsville to Orange Beach, AL.  The voyage includes 63 miles along the Tennessee River going through two locks and another 500 miles down the Tom Bigbee Waterway with its ten locks and through Mobile Bay and part of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to Orange Beach where the vessel will be turned over to its new owner. 

A bit before Thanksgiving 2020, Frank, the gentleman whose company rebuilt our boatlift and boat cover after Hurricane Michael wrecked them, called to ask if Mary and I would be interested in moving a 44-foot houseboat he was interested in buying from Wheeler Park to Orange Beach where he would take it over from us for the last two days of transit to Panama City.  He originally expected he might buy the vessel and leave it there in Tennessee until March, but later conversation with the Scott, the seller, indicated that he would need the boat to vacate the slip it is in by 1 January 2021.  Frank went to look at the boat and settle on a price with Scott the weekend of December 12-13, and pending survey, he came back enthused about the excellent condition of this 2001 Executive model Gibson.

I have been in touch via email with Scott who has been most gracious in providing me with manuals for the engines and generator as well as a very complete inventory of the spares carried aboard.  As all boaters know, the more spares you carry, the less anything will breakdown – it’s a boat thing.

At present, our plan is to depart Southport on 27 December for the 7-hour drive to Wheeler Park and spend the night aboard the boat.  The current voyage plan calls for eleven underway days of 50-60 miles each with us hopefully arriving at The Wharf in Orange Beach on or before 15 January 2021, seventeen days after departure.  15 January is a Friday, and Frank wants to take the boat over on a Friday afternoon so he can cruise it to our pier over the weekend.  His business demands that he be here and in charge during the weekdays.

As Scott is planning to buy another vessel, much of the housekeeping equipment will leave with him.  Frank has a big list of suggested replacement items including a coffeemaker (Kuerig preferred) for Mary (I can’t stand the stuff).  He has already reported purchase of that vital item, and you-know-who is now quite ready to venture forth.

With climatology reports for December and January indicating daily temperature ranges of 54-35 and 52-32 degrees Fahrenheit respectively, we will have to take plenty of warm clothing since we will be required to be outside on deck whenever locking through.  We had already invested in a couple of electric blankets.

All the marina stops along the way have been called to ensure they will be open and have gasoline for the two Crusader 320-HP main engines which will cruise us at one gallon per mile at around 10 MPH.  With 240 gallons of gas aboard, we will be good on fuel since the longest run between fuel docks will be 120 miles.  The boat can reach speeds of nearly 20 MPH, but gas consumption of an unknown huge amount ensues; so that sort of speed will be reserved for short spurts as required like hurrying to make a lock availability.

We will not be able to reach a marina before dark every day, and so will be anchoring overnight about three times.  Anticipated morning fog may delay our departure once in a while further complicating matters.