And fini for the Miss Patricia

 Thursday 14 January 2021 Southport, FL

We were underway at 0615 from an entirely peaceful night with no wind after sunset with just enough light to see the buoys as we entered the channel.  We had seen evidence of storm damage (Sally) all along the waterway starting in Orange Beach, and we kept seeing more evidence until we left the channel at Fort Walton and moved on out into the broad Choctawhatchee Bay which in places was glassy calm.  The strongest wind we had all day was experienced as we moored the boat at our home when the sea breeze picked up. 

The whole trip was uneventful, and we arrived with 15 gallons in the starboard tank and 30 in the port.  Starting back in Homeport Marina where we topped off the tanks, we burned 195 gallons of gasoline going 130 miles at mostly 2400-ish RPM or 1.5 gallons per mile.  This includes near-continuous generator running, except for seven hours while sleeping at anchor.

After we arrived home at 1300, we spent a couple of hours getting our belongings off the boat and cleaning it up before we told Frank we were home.  He quickly arrived, and I spent an hour or so with him going over connecting to shore power and starting and bringing the generator online before a friend of his showed up for a quick tour.

Frank wants to take the boat back down our track 48 miles to Baytowne Marina near San Destin.  He and a friend will show up here tomorrow morning with about twenty gallons of gas to put into the starboard tank to ensure we will have enough to run the ten miles to the fuel dock at Saint Andrews Marina.  I will accompany them that far to give Frank an underway tutorial and below decks tour while his friend runs the boat, and Mary will pick me up at the fuel dock before they depart for San Destin where they will be met by others driving there.

We found our house very cold due to a faulty heat pump.  We have our propane gas log and oil-filler radiator heaters running as well as the smaller heat pump in the new addition to the house to get temperatures to the bearable point while waiting on the repairman.

Thus, ends another delivery encountering no undue hazards and no damage to vessel or vessel or persons.

Okay, we're halfway home from where we were last.

 Wednesday 13 January 2021 Spectre Island Anchorage off Hurlburt USAFB

After getting underway a little after 0700 this morning, we anchored at 1400 behind this island named for the famous Spectre gunships which we can see flying over the island as I write this.  The weather has cleared with no clouds in the sky for the first time in days, and the calm water sparkles with the reflected sun.  The water is so clear compared to the muddy rivers and Mobile Bay giving us a white wake for the first time of this delivery that I can see our anchor on the bottom in 8-9 feet of water.  We stopped the boat in Santa Rosa Sound about an hour before we arrived to reset the Fortress anchor from its mud position to the anticipated sand here at the island.  As always, I use a snubber to hold the strain from the anchor rode.

The GIWW runs on the other side (north) of the island, and this favorable anchorage is between Santa Rosa Island (the many miles long barrier island stretching from Fort Walton Beach to Pensacola) and Spectre Island.  It is approximately seven steaming hours from home.

Windfinder.com shows winds building from astern of us after noon tomorrow, but by then we should be across 23-mile long Choctawhatchee Bay and into the narrow 15-mile cut (called the Grand Canyon by towboat people and locals) which leads into our home system of bays.  Then we will run through our own West Bay and turn up to the NE heading into North Bay and into good old Fanning Bayou.

As we passed through Big Lagoon west of Pensacola, I was reminded of my salad days as a junior high school age kid helping to launch the family boat at Sherman Cove on the Naval Air Station which is on the northern shore to run across the lagoon to the north shore of the barrier island.  The boat was filled with several kids a set of parents and all the supplies and sun cover Mom could cram in there.  We often had accompanying boats with the families of Dad's friends from work.  Once anchored a few yards off the beach, we would ferry all the shoreside base supplies ashore before beginning the water skiing events which ended when we waved into shore for lunch.  Hot, tiered, sandy, and thoroughly satisfied with our activities for the day, we returned to Sherman remembering to duck for the very low bridge crossing its entrance to then watch or participate as our abilities dictated in the complex and oddly entertaining boat recovery dance Dad had devised to to re-trailer the boat.  Today I noted the low bridge has been removed to allow taller boats to pass, and I was happy to see that the marina seems to be hurricane damage free and thriving for the military folks who can take advantage of it.

We have noted plenty of river flooding damage and even more direct hurricane damage everywhere along the Gulf coast.

As we finally near the end of this jaunt, we are trying to get the accounts and inventory ready for Frank who wants to immediately start using the boat.  Mary was hard at the inventory sheets today trying to figure out where various items had gotten to.

On the engineering side, seven hours of running at mostly 2400 RPM to make 10 MPH showed little oil use, and the generator, run the same amount of time also showed no oil use.  We ran through 86 gallons of gasoline getting 62 miles today.  The stbd tank was 5 gallons lower that the port owing to the generator drawing from it all day.

Halfway to where? Just go home.

Tuesday 12 December 2021 Homeport Marina in Gulf Shores, AL

We were snug in our sheltered slip last night and knowing the winds were not to die down until around lunch, we slept in and made breakfast late. 

Underway at 1150, our run down the long, narrow channel leading from Dog River down to the ship channel was calm.  Power setting was about 2500 RPM to achieve 10 MPH or a bit more in the shallow channel.  When we got to the deeper ship channel, the “squat” we had experienced in the boat channel ceased and we picked up speed to almost 12 MPH.  The throttle was eased back to about 2400 to keep us on the ten-MPH goal for the 35-mile run.

The seas picked up a bit as the fetch astern increased, and we comfortably sailed directly down sea all the way across the Bay.  With no auto-pilot and no really good steering compass, aside from the small car compass I stuck on the consoles before we left Wheeler Park, maintaining the route I had laid down in my Coastal Explorer chart plotting software was an observational exercise in which I corrected any off-track errors by steering to a general area of the small compass.  At times we could steer by just maintaining a slightly left of straight down sea course.  Once objects on the land area ahead became visible in the last third of the run across the Bay, we were able to steer for whichever object kept us near the route line.

Halfway across the 25-mile route angling southeasterly, Frank called to ask if we could get the boat as far as some place east of Escambia Bay (Pensacola).  His reason was that he had been studying the weather and had found Saturday to be a seriously windy day with predictions of thirty-plus MPH gusts.  I immediately began a search for a slip anywhere in Santa Rosa Sound or the Fort Walton or Destin area as someplace we could go to tomorrow after leaving this marina.  The results were dismal as no marina had a spare slip due in large part to all available slips in the area from Orange Beach to Panama City being occupied by local as a result of being displaced by hurricane damage to marinas over the last two years.  The main reason we needed a slip was to transfer us off and Frank and his guest onto the boat on Friday afternoon.  We have a good anchorage we like 62 miles east of here called Spectre Island, but that would not suit for a vessel turnover.

In the end it was decided that we would just take the boat all the way to Panama City, another 130 miles for a total of about 690 miles for this delivery.  At least we will be getting home a day early as our ETA is now Thursday.

We arrived here at 1430 and refueled having used 52 gallons of gasoline in 35 miles, or 1.48 gallons to the mile.  Dinner at Lulu’s was a disappointment for our last meal on Frank.  Stick with their sandwich menu.

Brother Jim and wife Jackie came to visit and exchange Xmas gifts with us, all socially distanced on the pier.

 

So tomorrow, Spectre Island anchorage, and the next day home. 

Into the big water

Monday 11 January 2021 Dog River Marina, Mobile

Despite the impending rough overnight weather forecast we spent a restful night at anchor (using my Fortress FX37 on mud setting) in the Tensaw River about a mile from the 40-mile mark of the Tombigbee Waterway which at that point is actually in the Mobile River.  Confused?  There was sufficient current to keep us steady with no yawing, and winds were light all night despite rain starting at 0200. 

The generator was shut down at bedtime for several reasons including potential for general mayhem like fire and dealing with carbon monoxide alarms going off.  The unit itself is very quiet despite the fact that it is directly under the bed, but even this one displays the common disquieting (at least to me) loading/unloading noises as the air condition systems start and stop.  The temperature outside was 39F and 51F inside at 0500 when I got up and started it to warm the interior preparatory to rousting Mary out of her warm nest of quilts.

We were underway in the pre-dawn rain and general grungy weather and entered to Mobile River to head to that fair city by dawn, although you couldn’t tell much difference in the gloom.  We overtook or passed several tows on the way south, and with only 54 miles to run, we kept the RPMs to 1800 running at 10.2 MPH with the current and sticked the tanks at a one-hour interval to find we were burning 10-12 gallons of gas an hour. 

We briefly reversed course into the current to get an understanding of our “still water” speed, which turned out to be about 8.6 MPH.  With a theoretical hull speed of 10.06 MPH computed at 1.32 times the square root of the hull length in feet times 1.15 to convert to MPH, this might seem a bit slower than the hull would economically support, but some would say that a more conservative 1.0 times the square root of the hull length in feet (resulting in 7.6 MPH), is a better option.  So we were running is a sweet spot between the two options for hull speed, and the boat and engine combination is very quiet at this speed.  The boat is very quiet underway as a result of the engines being all the way aft.  This was the first day we did not have one of our three carbon monoxide detectors sound off while underway.

The winds continued to build from the north as we headed south, and by the time we exited the close confines of the harbor area, the following seas were beginning to build.  The boat rode the 2-3 foot wind waves well enough, but seven miles south of the harbor, where the seas were pretty well built up, we had to turn 90 degree to starboard presenting our beam to the seas giving us quite a jostling.  We had prepared for this by taping the refrigerator doors closed and removing all loose items to safe locations.  Eventually I discovered a higher power setting for the engines which somewhat moderated the rolling motions.

We arrived at the Dog River Marina dock with 78 gallons of our 240-gallon capacity remaining after 131 miles of travel.  With gale force winds predicted for tonight, we were happy to be offered a slip inside the basin rather than the normal transient dock along the Dog River.

The plan for tomorrow is to await the forecasted easing of conditions on Mobile Bay so we can run the mostly southeasterly 24-mile run across the Bay in the afternoon.  Then we enter the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and travel a few miles to Homeport Marina where Lulu’s (Jimmy Buffet’s sister) Restaurant is located.  There we will clean up the boat, collect most of our possessions, and hand over the boat to Frank when he arrives on Friday afternoon, and drive his car back home to Southport to await his arrival on the boat on Sunday. 

Maximum frustration

 

Sunday 10 January 2021 Tensaw River Anchorage

I am not sure why, but the lowest outdoor temperatures we have been seeing at night are quite a bit higher than the forecasted temps, while the daytime temps seem to match up fairly well.  Our lowest temp last night was 39F as opposed to the drastic landside forecast of 25F.  Must be the water moderating our local conditions.

Today our fabulous lock luck failed in the most spectacular fashion.

I got up at 0400 this morning at Bobby’s Fish Camp and over a period of almost an hour, I tried calling the Coffeeville lock just three miles downstream from us.  There was no tug traffic going by us toward or from the lock, and the VHF radio was dead on both channel 16 and 14.  With no success on the phone, I finally resorted to the radio at 0500, starting on channel 16 shifting to 14.  I asked the person who answered the call what our prospects were for a passage of the lock within a short time period.  His laconic and extremely weak strength response was simply, “Come on down and call when you arrive.”  It was like he was talking to the radio mike from across the room.  EVERY other of the 13 lock masters we contacted throughout this delivery would state that we should either come to the lock because the lock was clear of higher priority traffic or that we would be encountering higher priority traffic and should delay getting underway if we were at a marine nearby.

We arrived shortly thereafter and called the lock operator who then informed us in the same vague voice that we would be having to wait our turn after the tug Brian Boudreaux.  There is absolutely no way this man did not know that tug was on the way and would interfere with our passage.  He should have told me this so I could make up my own mind about getting underway in the pitch dark.  I can only attribute this to one extremely poor attitude or blind incompetence.  In my opinion there was time for him to lock us down and turn the lock around for the tug, but it was the unconcerned attitude of the lock operator which made me angry.

That was bad enough, but as we waited for the Boudreaux to lock through, I asked the lock master if we were next to which he responded, “You are going to have to wait for the next tug.”  Incredulously, there was another tug within a couple of miles he had AGAIN refused to inform us about a tug's presence, for both the tug’s and our safety in the tight confines near the lock.  I told him in very graphic language that I was departing and heading back to the pier at Bobby’s Fish Camp and did not appreciate be literally kept in the dark about what was going on.  This was the most unprofessional lock master I ever encountered in the dozens of lock passages I have made over the last few years.

We spent an hour or so at Bobby’s to have a quick breakfast and to outwait this idiot lock operator’s shift which ended at 0700.  When I overheard the departing comments of the second tug, I called the new duty lock master on the radio and was quite pleased to hear a clear and strong voice telling me good morning and that all was clear for us to lock down, and he was true to his word.  His radio procedure was precise, and his good attitude was one we have come to expect of lock masters.  I am certain that this second lock master would have provided us the information we would have needed to remain in place at Bobby’s until it was safe to run down to the lock not having to avoid two tugs in the dark.  When I complained about his predecessor, he promptly gave me the name of the supervisor to whom I spoke the next morning and to whom I forwarded the above comments.

Once clear of the awful lock experience, we were free at last to travel at our chosen speed without further lock interferences.  However, this two-and-a-half-hour delay quashed all hope of making it to the Dog River Marina by sunset, and we throttled back a few hundred RPM to arrive at this anchorage by 1500.  We noted a lot of evidence of recent flooding damage, and many buoys were missing; so we ran the boat along a track I had laid down on the computer which honored the missing buoys just as if they were still there.  We had a few tugs to overtake of pass on opposite courses, and all went well.

There is no significant traffic through this small river, and there is enough current to keep the boat straight behind its anchor, one of my own Fortress FX37s I brought along. 

We used 105 gallons of gas and ran 78 miles for the day.  Tomorrow, we will run the remaining 54 miles to Dog River Marina and hopefully depart Tuesday for our final 35 mile run to Homeport Marina near Lulu’s (Jimmy Buffet’s sister) Restaurant in Orange Beach/Gulf Shores.

Rollin' on down the river

 

Saturday 9 January 2021 Bobby’s Fish Camp near Coffeeville, AL

This day went well, as we got underway at 0620 and were through the Demopolis lock by 0710.  We ran at 2500 RPM making up to 13-plus MPH at times.  Along the way the overcast and leafless trees on either bank made for a very dreary passage, but at least the blinding glare of the winter sun we have experienced on sunny days was not an issue.  In total, we saw one southbound tow, two northbound tows, one yacht bound for Chattanooga from Annapolis, various bird life and two pigs swimming the river, one adult and one piglet.  Goodness knows what forced those two into the river.

Upon arrival at Bobby’s, we went alongside their tee-dock at the south end where the fuel pump is located.  An earlier phone call to the listed number connected me to a Laura Jane who admitted to ownership of the place and who told me that she would send her husband down to attend to the fueling but that we would wait a bit for him to show.  Apparently, they do not live on premises which in addition to the office and former restaurant up the hill a hundred yards consists of a few small ramshackle waterfront houses which I would term “rustic” with the associated pickup trucks and detritus found in “alternative” communities.

An hour after we arrived the man of the hour, decked out in full camouflage, arrived in his Gator four-wheeler and shouted down the hill that I could start pumping.  With winds roaring right down the river and air temperature 41 degrees Fahrenheit, pumping 120 gallons of gas into the tanks was a chilly process indeed.

During the last hour of our run today, we picked up speed to 2800 RPM to see how the engines behaved and the associated fuel usage.  Remembering that this boat ran at 4400 RPM making 22 MPH during its sea trial, there was not much concern for bad things happening.  By sticking the tanks both before and after the hour-long test, we found that the boat uses 20 gallons of gasoline per hour at that RPM and that with the push of the river, we were making 14 MPH. 

This information helps us determine if we will be anchoring out north of Mobile tomorrow or if perchance, we could make the entire 130-mile run through that city and to Dog River Marine 14 miles south of it.  We need a reserve of 10-20% of our fuel to ensure we don’t end up running short which means there is roughly 200 of our 240 gallons of gas we can plan to burn.  At 2800 PRM making at least 13 MPH, we would arrive in ten hours just at sunset (we have no radar) having burned 200 gallons.  Coffeeville lock, two miles away, will be our last lock before entering tidal waters where our predictable river current no longer pertain.  If we stop making that 13 MPH speed due to tidal effects, we will be in the dark arriving at Dog River as well as eating into our reserve fuel supply.  We will see how things go tomorrow and play it by ear as we near the anchorage north of the city.

Tonight’s low temperature is predicted to be 25 degrees F.

Ready in all respects for sea, sir!

Friday 8 January 2021 Demopolis, AL

The Vacuflush toilet motor, piston and pressure valve arrived today as did the piezo-electric alarm for the firefighting system in the engine room.  All were duly installed (I only had to disassemble the vacuum generator on the toilet system once to resolve a leaking o-ring.  Thus, we are in all respects ready for sea, or at least to proceed on to Bobby’s Fish Camp, about 93 miles down the waterway.

The plan is to call the Demopolis lock master (the dam is just a couple of miles away) on the phone at around 0530 tomorrow morning to get a handle on when he can give us a drop.  If it looks bad, back to sleep; otherwise, it will be hurry up and get moving!  That will be our only lock for the day.  Our last of fourteen locks is the Coffeeville lock just a mile or so south of Bobby’s Fish Camp where we will repeat tomorrow’s plan in an effort to see how far we can run in one day.  The rain we had over the last two days, while not an inundation, should give us a pretty good shove downstream as we exit the locks.  Winds are forecast from the NNW and not too strong tomorrow and more northerly but lighter the next day.  We are hoping for enough sun to help warm the cabin because it is going to be in the low forties both days. 

SMOKE!!! Oh, sh____

 

Thursday 7 January 2021 Demopolis, AL

So, what’s the worst thing that can break on a twin-engine gasoline powered houseboat on a delivery trip?  Why the Vacuflush commode machinery in the ONLY head on board, of course, especially when your slip is nearly a quarter mile from the marina’s heads.  You thought it was something to do with the engines, didn’t you?

This casualty has stopped any thoughts of moving the boat until it is corrected.

I was in town in the rental car about to see if the local auto parts store carried a piezo-electric alarm I could hook up to the firefighting gas bottle in the engine room (another story altogether) when Mary, who had remained on the boat, called to say, “There is smoke in here, and I am getting off.”  I told her to shut down electricity on the pier as I jumped into the car and sped through this small town toward the marina.  I saw no smoke over the basin as I drove up which helped a lot with heart rate.

Mary was waiting on the floating dock by the bow of the boat and told me she had flushed the toilet and soon thereafter smelled a burning odor and saw white smoke when she looked aft in the cabin from the forward sliding glass door as she exited.  I jumped down the deck hatch in the aft cabin and found LOTS of white smoke there but no raging fire.  Instead, I found a charred bit of wiring on the commode’s vacuum generator’s motor.  For anybody familiar with the way an airliner commode flushes, the Vacuflush system will be familiar.

The motor was as hot as a firecracker and had obviously shorted out causing the 12-Volt wires feeding it to go cherry red burning their insulation off for about a foot until one of the wires burned through stopping the short circuit.  The fact that this 5-Amp motor was protected by an overly large 40-Amp circuit back in the engine room did not help matter when the short developed.  I will be inserting a 5-10 Amp fuse when I repair all this.  Further testing revealed that the electrical contacts in the pressure switch, the thing that tells the motor to run the vacuum pump, were also burned out, probably the reason the short circuit was broken.  For the uninitiated, that is around $450 worth in parts.

Luckily, Environmental Marine Services in south Florida had the Vacuflush parts and said they could get them here tomorrow afternoon at an exorbitant price.  Marine Maintenance in Panama City Beach also had the piezo-electric buzzer I need to connect to the firefighting bottle in the engine room, and they plan on having it here by COB tomorrow as well.  If all that happens, we should be ready by late evening to get underway on Saturday as planned.

I had thought all this time that the automatic gas release firefighting system would alert me at the helm with a light which said it was the gas release indicator, but yesterday I found the pressure switch on the bottle had its wires snipped with NO indication of where the original wires had been.  Had the gas released in the event of a fire back there in the engine room while we were bowling along in the waterway, the engines MIGHT have stopped when they ingested the gas, but they might have also sucked enough gas into themselves and out their twin exhausts reducing the concentration of the gas to the point the fire could have continued burning the boat down.  A warning of some type is needed for the operator to know he needs to shut the engines down!  The surveyor hired to check out the boat missed this vital bit of screw-up, and the seller had nothing to tell me about it either, when I looked at the useless warning light on the helm, damn them both.

After I got the commode vacuum generator parts and the firefighting system buzzer on the way, I spent the rest of the day connecting and running forty-plus feet of wire from the helm console to the gas bottle pressure switch and cleaning up the wiring on the vacuum generator in readiness to receive the new parts.  Ho hum, JASDIP[RG1]  - just another day in the life of a delivery crew.

---

 [RG1]

JASDIP

 

Tuesday 5 January 2021 Demopolis, AL

“Moored as before,” as our midnight deck logs used to start out in the Navy taking electrical and water service from the pier.  Engineering plant is in “cold iron” status.

Yesterday was a sort of idle day as we busied ourselves finding a rental car.  Enterprise has an office at a local car dealer, but we ended up renting from a used car lot as Enterprise had no car available.  The young man who rented me the car has lived here all his life.  He is a college graduate from a local one just down the road.  We sat and chatted about the various aspects of a mobile life versus the more static existence.  He never expects to go anywhere, but he wonders what other places and countries are like.  I told him to stay home because the world at large sucks.

Later in the afternoon I wandered over to the Liberty to see how Shorty was doing with his running light issue which caused him to have to clear the river and get moored the other night rather than wait his turn out there in the dark for fuel behind us as barges bore down on him.  I ended up getting my voltmeter and tracking down the issue which turned out to be several – burned out bulbs, wrong bulb bases, and disconnected wiring at the starboard side light.  Once we had power at each light, the hunt was on for bulbs.  He could not find them (24-volt) until this morning when he was looking for something else.  There is a fancy alarm and indicator panel over his head in the pilothouse featuring an outline of the boat with over twenty small red LEDs indicating everything from bilge water levels to whether the running light switch has been depressed.  In the case of the running lights, it does not tell him whether the individual lights are shining.  I think he has been running for a while thinking the lights were on just because the indicator light said they were. 

Mary got a complete tour of the sumptuous Liberty today including at my insistence, the gleaming “chromeness” and shiny white paint of the spotless engine room featuring two 700-horespower turbo-charged Cats.   She’ll never get a chance to see that kind of thing again.  They are shoving off for parts south tomorrow, and we’ll miss them.  Bon voyage, Liberties.

I have also spent some time speaking to the owner of a Grand Banks 46 moored next to the Liberty.  A unique feature I had not seen before is the widening of the deckhouse into the walkway where the aft cabin begins.  That must give a lot of extra walk around room in that cabin.  He bought the boat in Wisconsin in November and had to scoot south before everything up there froze over which meant that he had no time to learn the boat and its systems.  He has some interesting experiences to speak of!

We have elected to remain here in Demopolis until Saturday morning the ninth for a couple of reasons.  We are ahead of the nominal schedule due to never staying more than a night at our previous stops, and the weather is better after Friday.  I have to remember to confirm gasoline availability at Bobby’s Fish Camp 97 miles down the river.  If they do not, we will have to go very slowly in order to have enough to make it to Mobile on fumes.

Today was a genuinely nice day with clear skies and a warm sun when you were in it with temps about 60.  Fliers would call it “clear and visibility unlimited” or CAVU meaning they could fly not having to rely on instruments or under visual flight rules.  Oddly enough there are two boats on this pier within several slips of each other named CAVU.  How odd; must be aviator owners.

My big accomplishment today was to track down why the single windshield wiper was not working – note past tense.  I have been far too busy and/or tired to look into this mystery.  The previous owner had told Frank, the new owner, it was inoperative, and Frank accepted that on face value as he had little option to do otherwise.  What puzzled me was that I found all the parts to a pantograph wiper arm down in the storage compartment.  Looking at the upper part of the windshield (I guess it’s just a “window” on a houseboat when it is not underway), I noted the splined shaft of the wiper motor sticking out of the cabin side (wall?  I am so confused!) when I went out on deck, but pressing “On” part on the “Wiper” button on the helm console failed to run the motor.  A few minutes behind the console with a flashlight revealed a burned-out fuse, which I promptly replaced resulting in a running motor.  A quick trip to the NAPA store netted a brand new 22-inch wiper blade to replace the shredded 18-incher found with the other parts.  I sent Frank a short video of the operating wiper explaining that I did not want him to think I was just goofing off here and got a laugh out of him.  I guess he had not looked at the latest delivery expense spreadsheet I sent him.

Mary had an even more productive day; she got the laundry done after a number of trips back and forth to the laundry room down the looong ell-shaped pier, but having spent so little time helping there, I cannot give as complete a description of events as in the case of the wiper.

Tonight, we went to one of two acceptable dining out establishments here in town, the Red Barn, where we both ordered the fillet mignon, yum.  We have decided to pace ourselves with lunch out followed by a snack at night and dinner out the next day preceded by a light lunch on the next day.  Must watch our girlish figures.

Oh!  The big news here is that tomorrow is MEATLOAF day at the Simply Delicious Bakery and Café out near Walmart.  Attendance mandatory, then a food coma nap.  The delivery captain life is rough.

 

Skipping days

 

Sunday 3 January 2021 Demopolis, AL

Another day underway at 0700 after checking with the Stennis lock master at 0600 for the all-clear.  Liberty lead off after our expeditious locking, and we hot-footed it down the waterway making excellent time due to the following current. 

This is a photo taken from the Liberty of us at dawn briefly waiting at the Stennis Lock.

We were still about an hour and a half from our second lock when my AIS (Automatic Information System – short range data transmitted for all commercial vessels and some recreational) detected a slow-moving vessel several miles ahead which we assumed to be a tow, proven true when it hove into sight around a bend ahead.  The problem one faces with this situation is will our speed advantage be enough to get us to the lock about an hour ahead of him in order for the lock master to lower us and then return his lock to full readiness to accept the tow?  Additionally, is there any other traffic either northbound or southbound closer to the lock which would destroy any chances we had of a swift passage of the lock?  I ran the numbers and told the Liberty that we could make the time, and then I phoned the lock (too far away for VHF contact) to tell him our plan and ask him how that all squared with this view of the situation.  He knew he had the southbound tow we were about to pass to deal with, but he was uncertain where a northbound tow was.  So, we pressed on leaving the southbound tow in our wake and lucked out again as the lock was ready for us with no northbound tow interfering with our plan.

We were bowling along at such a rate after the second lock (around 12-13 MPH) that we encountered our planned anchorage (the last suitable one before Demopolis) at noon.  With almost sixty miles under our belts and only another sixty miles to go to Demopolis, we elected to attempt a passage of the last lock (Heflin) between us and Demopolis.  A timely locking would allow us to arrive at the Kingfisher Marina just at sunset. 

Once we passed through third lock, we would be committed for Demopolis regardless of approaching darkness.  Running in the dark with no radar in a narrow waterway is never a good idea, even if the lead boat has all the right equipment.  The computer chartplotter and our semi-feeble spotlight can help us stay in the middle, but debris is invisible with distance to the lead boat difficult to judge.  At two hours north of that third and last lock of the day, I called to find that he definitely had a northbound tow due within an hour and that it would take an hour to lock him up.  Both of us added another couple of hundred RPM to be at the lock by the time the tow was exiting, and that is just what happened.  Score!

Our lock luck held true as we got to the lock just after a northbound tug and barge exited which meant the lock was in the right condition for us to slip right in and get locked down.  After this lucky locking realized that reaching Demopolis before dark in one throw was not quite possible, but close. 

Upon arrival in the Demopolis area, I elected to go first to bypass the Kingfisher Marina basin entrance and get gasoline at the fuel dock in a second basin before returning a few hundred yards to Kingfisher.  Liberty went into the marina while we fueled, and it was pitch dark by the time we backed away from the fuel dock.  Our chartplotter and spotlight served us well, and we were guided via radio by the dock master down between the marina piers to our slip for the next four days.

Somebody stole our ride!

 

Saturday 2 January 2021 Columbus, MS

We got underway on the dot at 0700 today leaving the fuel dock vacant for the Liberty (a 57-foot Marlowe) to move in to take on diesel.  We were quickly through the Fulton lock just three miles from the marina.  Shorty, the Liberty’s owner, had planned to eventually catch up to us before we got through all of the locks and to arrive at Columbus Marina together.  Then very soon after we were clear of the Fulton lock, we heard his VHF radio call to Fulton lock asking for transit.  He later told us that after going to all the trouble of moving his boat over to the fuel dock, they found out the marina was out of diesel.  Thank goodness they had gas for us!

When we got to the second lock

By the time we got to the second lock (Grover Wilkins) the Liberty was in sight a couple of miles astern, and there was an odd-looking unpainted aluminum vessel approaching the lock ahead of us.  On closer examination the oddball turned out to be a pontoon boat with a narrow aluminum cabin built on to its deck.  The lock was closed because a north-bound vessel was being floated up to our level, but this pontoon boat motored up to the lock’s wing walls.  Soon the lock master came out to speak to the person in the boat.  We were a half to a quarter mile away by now standing by for the lock when I called the lock master on the radio to find out what was going on.  Turns out the guy’s handheld radio had a discharged battery, and he had no way to recharge it.

After the northbound vessel was clear, we and the Liberty followed the pontoon boat into the lock.  We were astern of the pontoon, and I was able to speak to him.  He had somebody drive him and his boat from Michigan to the Evansville, Indiana on the Ohio River where he launched upon his totally unplanned journey.  When asked where he was heading, his answer was. “The Gulf.”  He also told me that he felt he had been moving too fast and wanted to run at 5 MPH.  Because the next lock, Amory, was only 5.2 miles distant, he agreed to keep up with our brisker pace of around 11 MPH in order that we would not have wait for him to catch up with us because the lock master would not drop just Liberty and us with him in sight and wanting a locking.  After the Amory lock, he feel astern because he intended to enter the Aberdeen Marina (too shallow for us) just before the Aberdeen lock, our last lock for the day, before the 22-mile run to Columbus Marina.

We arrived here at about 1430 and went straight to the fuel dock to refuel and pump out the waste tank while Liberty waited in the river before attempting the shallow channel after we had moved away from the fuel dock to our overnight berth. 

Our original intention had been to remain here for two nights in order to take advantage of the usual courtesy car the marinas hereabout offer, but somebody stole them the other day!  Geez, what next?  Liberty was planning to move on tomorrow, and with this bad news, we also decided to move on and spend more days in Demopolis than originally planned. 

Demopolis is three locks and about 119 miles away, an impossible single day run for us.  Well, if I was willing to flog the engines at 3500 RPM for about 9 hours, we might make it if we did not run through our fuel first.  Anyway, the intention at this point is to anchor about halfway.

The marina manager here is pushing the advantages of anchoring in the spillway below the Heflin lock and dam as reported over the last couple of years.  We tried that in 2006 and were swept off our anchorage by a release of water by the dam after a rainstorm that evening.  It was a harrowing experience in a narrow rock-lined area at 10 PM on a dark night.  We will probably choose a spot in a creek north of Heflin dam and take the consequences of any delay which might ensue the next morning regarding getting through the lock for the remaining fifty miles to Demopolis.

While we are unsure of the anchoring intentions of Liberty’s crew, they plan to follow us out the channel tomorrow to the Stennis lock about a half mile away after I confirm the availability of the lock to us.

Blown about in locks, what fun

 

1 January 2021 Midway Marina near Fulton, MS

At 0800 this fine New Year’s Day I found the fuel dock man at work.  We two quickly slid the boat aft about sixty feet along the transient dock with the brisk wind from ahead assisting us to the point that I had to whip a quick hitch on a cleat to prevent the boat from getting away from us at the end of the pier.  After a quick 90-gallon fueling and waste tank pump out, we were on our way at 0915 to run the 59 miles to this marina. 

As we ran out of the Yellow Creek area exiting south of Goat Island, we ended up in trail of a Marlowe yacht, probably of 60-ish feet in length.  We were running at 2400 RPM to try to make up a little time because of our late start.  The Marlowe, named Liberty, was running a bit faster than we were, but we managed to keep it in sight most of the way to the first lock of the day, 36 miles from Aqua Harbor. 

At some point in the morning, I called the Liberty on the radio to ask him if he knew that the locks operated only on the even hour on national holidays.  He allowed as how he did not know that but would call ahead to check once he got clear of the long canal we were in at the time.  Later, he called to say that the Jamie Whitten lock master said we could just come on ahead to lock down at any time.  Apparently our “lock luck” was going to be operative a second day, SCORE!  Liberty informed the lock master that there were two of us and that he would tie up in the lock to wait for us to catch up the couple of miles we lagged them.

We and the Liberty quickly fell into a routine as we passed through the three locks we needed to transit in order to reach Midway.  He proceeded a about 10 MPH, a pace we were comfortable with and took charge of communicating with the locks as we approached telling them there were two of us and that he would enter first and secure.  All I had to do was answer, “Miss Patricia copies all.”  This let Liberty and the lock master know we knew what the plan was.  The lock masters at these closely spaced dams had also communicated our presence to the lock next downstream so that precious time was not wasted in preparing the lock chambers for us.  We needed all the time we could get to make Midway before dark.

In the first two locks, the wind was howling through them buffeting us about after we were tied to the single floating bollard at the amidship cleat.  The bow would get pushed out putting a tremendous strain on the single ½-inch twisted nylon line used in the lasso rig we have.  This wind also blew water squirting out of a fissure in a steel plate in one lock back along the side of the boat thoroughly wetting the person tending the line to the bollard.  My station was at the helm to handle emergencies as we locked which means you-know-who got wet, and SHE was not amused.

We entered the channel at Midway first because we needed fuel and because the fuel dock was farthest in along the guest pier.  We were quickly moored and fueled, and then it was dark – good timing.

There had been some conversation between the previous owner of the boat and me regarding the lube oil usage of the two big gas engines.  He believed that we would need little make-up lube oil as we went along and left us only two quarts of oil, but he was not counting on the fact that this is a delivery and not the 1600-RPM running he claimed he did.  We are running 2200-2500 RPM, which is not really stressing the engines, but decidedly more than he was used to running.  I had told him that the engines had apparently used a quart of oil each the first day, based on my check of their oil when they were stone cold at Wheeler Marina.  This precipitated a discussion about when to check the oil, he saying that the engine annual says within minutes after shut down, and me saying that should result in a lower level than waiting longer.  As it turns out, the book says to wait at least five minutes after shut down which is a lot different meaning than his assumption.  My initial estimate of a quart apiece may not have been totally accurate as I was checking the oil while the engines were still a little warm after the first day’s run.  By this morning, with more hours for the oil to seep down to the sump from other areas in the engines, it looked like maybe a half quart additional oil would suffice.  The check today several hours after the engines were shut down shows both engines used no oil.  I believe the high-speed experiments of day one probably contributed to the oil usage, while day two with its moderate speeds throughout the day showed almost no usage. 

All this seemingly trivial chitchat about a half a quart of oil is actually exceedingly important when considering that this boat’s engines are actually pretty new in hours, with less than 1,000 and that excessive oil usage could mean many thousands of dollars in repairs to the new owner.  At this point, he and I agree that all is well with the engines and that my careful monitoring of oil usage on this long trip will provide him valuable information during his future trips in it.  We will doubtless run into a need in the near future to push the engines, and it will be good to know what to expect in the way of oil use.  To that end, we went to the local auto supply store and bought two gallons of engine oil.  Now we can quit worrying about whether or not we will run out of oil in some lonely stretch of river.

Mary and I treated ourselves to a fine dinner at Guy’s Place up on the hill above the Marina tonight.  We stuff ourselves to no end and have decided we will need no food tomorrow!