Cruising, cruising over the bounding main…oops, it’s the wrong song. Cruising up the river on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday etc. afternoon…is more like it!
YA was waiting happily for us in Columbus. We arrived on the afternoon of July 3, and immediately moved the boat into a covered slip. Brought the temperature down about 20 degrees---to 80+! It has been seriously hot for almost 2 weeks, with almost no rain. Our poor geranium is nearly gone, but bravely brings forth new buds on the few stems that have prevailed.
My friend from high school, Jan (Hunstad) Barnett, whose boat LONG GONE is across from us in the marina, very kindly watered the geranium whenever she visited her boat. Jan came by for dinner on the 3rd. It was great to have a chance to visit!
Fred and I spent the 4th in preparation. While Fred sweltered (at least there was shade) outside scrubbing away a month of dust, dirt and bugs, I grocery shopped and got us organized indoors. In honor of the holiday, we flew the oversized American Flag. Fireworks had been set off over the weekend, so we had a quiet evening at home, and were happy to be there.
Thursday, instead of leaving, Fred solved the mystery of low water pressure in the starboard tank, and a very sad sounding water pump. Happily, the pump is just fine. It was the pipe ‘twixt tank and faucet that was totally closed off with sediment of some sort. A couple of trips to the wonderful hardware store in Columbus, a bit of reaming and polishing, and viola! Water pressure and a blessedly silent pump!
Kroger’s grocery store sold the best, sweetest ears of corn either of us could ever recall eating. Grown in Mississippi, they boasted! Had corn for dinner two days in a row!
On Thursday, (grandson Matt’s 21st birthday!) we headed upstream, and had a very strange experience. We’d just gone through the third lock of the day, and had made a turn to head into Smithville marina for the night, when a small storm Fred had seen on the Weather Works computer screen made itself known. Within minutes the water went from totally calm to raging whitecaps and a howling wind. We’d just approached the dock, and it seemed the best thing to do was to tie up, so, with great difficulty, we did. As we were securing the boat, we heard the dock groaning, and could see boards lifting! One of our fenders had become trapped under the dock and rather than snapping the fender’s line, the dock was lifting up, and before our eyes, our stout aluminum rail was bent down! With incredible tension on the line, we couldn’t untie the knot holding the fender, but we were able to un-jam it, and added a round ball fender which slid as the dock rose and fell, and didn’t get hooked. 10 minutes later the wind simply stopped---or moved on, and the air cleared. Amazing. Fred pounded the nails back into the dock; we had dinner and went to bed. Heard later that this “straight wind” storm, or ones just like it, had done damage elsewhere during the past 24 hours. It was something we’ve not seen before and will happily forego forever!
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we continued wending our way north in the Tenn-Tom Waterway, which, according Quimby’s Cruising Guide, is the “biggest civil works project ever undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers”. Using the Waterway, boaters, recreational like us as well as commercial tows, are able to bypass the southern half of the Mississippi River and reach the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile.
There are 12 locks on the Waterway, and recreational vessels are at the bottom of the list in priority of use, so we felt really lucky that only once did we have a wait of more than a few minutes. That was at the last lock---and the largest! Whitten lock lowered us 84 feet! We tied to a ‘cell’, a large round structure placed in the approach for just that purpose, and as we freed our lines 45 minutes later, to enter the lock a deer swam across the river! Missed him with the camera, and strangely, there was only one. Aside from jumping fish, playing and diving cormorants, stately egrets and a dragonfly who adopted us for an afternoon, we’ve not seem much wildlife at all, so the deer was a real treat.
We found the Tennessee River to be much more beautiful, relaxing and interesting than when we came down in 2009. Not sure why, but one theory (from Jordan, who will turn 21 next week, and who cooked our breakfast at the lovely Leatherwood Marina’s Pirate Cove restaurant) is that the flood waters that swooped through after the big rains in 2009 cleared the shoreline.
In any case, we’re now at Green Turtle Bay Marina, in Grand River, KY. Tomorrow morning Fred will install the new battery for the generator, we’ll mail mail, get the holding tank pumped, and be ready to head for Paducah, KY and the Ohio River.
Will talk with you all then! Be well, and remember to breathe!
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