The last two home games obviously didn't go as hoped. Auburn comes into the season ranked as low as the Vols and look how that has turned out. We did however have a nice weekend. Friday was a beautiful day for coming up river and Saturday was forecast to be another sunny day. Somehow it didn't quite work out that way, but the gray day didn't result in rain which was great. There were as many AU fans on the boat that day as people in the correct shade of orange. The party was much better than the game!!
On Friday before the last home game, we had come up river early in the rain to catch a UT men's basketball game. We were the only boat at Calhoun's so docking was prime. Our bball game was a W so nice start for the weekend. Temperatures were falling and a 7 PM kickoff on Saturday meant it would be a cold evening. The Vandy game was one that we all hoped the team would pull out for a chance at a bowl game, but one red flag at 48 seconds to go changed that around. Sunday provided another bright sunny day for the last trip to Choto before going back to Chattanooga.
Until this year, I had never had to think about the logistics of moving a boat. Planning the trip back down river took quite a bit of that. There's the car that needs to be at the marina in Chattanooga to get us back to Marietta, but we still need to drive to Knoxville. A one way rental car solved that and my frat brother Mike helped me turn that in and get back to the boat. It was about 26 degrees that morning and we needed fuel, water and a pump-out. Ft Loudon Marina was the planned location to get all that done. It took a bit longer than expected as no one was at the fuel dock, but we got everything done and headed for the lock at about 11AM.
Needless to say, we hadn't been in a lock since the trip up in August and now headed down stream one new twist comes into play. I like to lock thru with the port side on the dock wall. That's the way I learned so it's just more comfortable. But the two locks we have to go back through only have bollards on one side and that means a starboard tie up. We adapted without incident and were reminded that locking down is smoother than locking up because the chamber is draining and there are no whirlpools created like when the chamber is filling.
Friday ended at Blue Springs Marina where we stayed over night, Nice place, but hard to find off the channel. We had a spot right in the "front row" - all by ourselves - for the evening. The day had warmed up. We grilled and had dinner on the bridge before the sun set and the temperature went back down into the mid-20's.
We had a bit of a surprise on Saturday morning. Turns out the marina location is very close to the Central Time Zone and our clocks all corrected to CST. That made us an hour late leaving, but we didn't know it until the clocks started shifting back to EST. It took a phone call to figure out what was happening. Now we needed to make up time and that resulted in a bit of adventure.
The south end of Ft Loudon Lake has several short cuts that trim off places where the river literally doubles back on itself. One of those is about 11 miles upstream from Watts Bar Dam. It is well marked on the chart plotter and in the chart book as well - if you get the book out to check it. Well it would cut off about 5 miles and that would be a big help. As we approached the inlet, Regina says "this is just like when we used go off trail skiing" and little did we know that we were about to go into the woods. At first, the cut thru looked pretty good. Not huge but water depth was fine. Then we turned into the final section and the channel width went down to less than 30' and the water depth was suddenly reading 2.3'!! I NEED no less than 3.0' and here we are with no way out. Somehow we get through. My depth finder must have some fluff in the numbers because we didn't even stir up any mud. Won't be doing that again anytime soon!!
Watts Bar had the lock ready for us about 10 minutes after we got there. Down we go and when we exit we are back to Chickamauga Lake with 59 miles to go to our marina. This part of the river is virtually undeveloped and we go almost 30 miles before seeing anything other than fisherman and wildlife. There is a large bird sanctuary in that area and along the river were hundreds of egrets as well as other sea birds.
It was great to come back into our marina near the dam. We were hailed on the radio by another couple on our dock who were out for a little ride. By 4:30, the boat was back in it's slip and it was time to find a location to go watch the Vols play Kentucky. Seemed like an eternity since our last win, but that game ended well as did our first experience with the Navy. Go Big Orange - Blue Ayes is back home.
