Living Under The Bridge

Did that get your attention?  A few years back I brought the boat up and when asked where I lived that was my answer.  I didn't exactly live under the Henley Street bridge, but I was very close to it!  This year I'm closer to the old railway bridge than Henley.  A bit of trivia - did you know that the stone piers supporting the railway bridge were constructed in 1850?  It was a wooden bridge until 1903 when the structure was changed to steel.  The steel structure you see there today was placed in 1940!

We decided to leave Chattanooga on Labor Day to start the trip to Knoxville.  It's 130 miles from Gold Point Marina in Chattanooga to Ft Loudon Marina plus 2 locks to transit.  That takes about 8 hours to do.  On September 2, we left Ft Loudoun and traveled the last 45 miles to our spot on the Vol Navy dock.  Regina suggested that we come up a bit earlier than originally planned and it was a good thing that we did!  I got the last open spot on the inside, right beside our friends on Miss Tenn-A-Sea and Cheers Dude. This will be our location until we leave in mid-November.

Made the news on WVLT

Most people's reaction to living on a boat is "WOW that must be so much fun".  Well, I got to admit that I do enjoy it.  Probably more than Regina does.  But it isn't always fun.  With the move to South Carolina, we hadn't used the boat much this summer.  If we had been around, I think we might have discovered a few things that could have been addressed sooner.  On the way up, I began having issues starting the starboard engine.  Turns out that the alternator on that engine failed and I had old batteries.  Seems like the surveyor should have noted that my main batteries were 6 years old, but he didn't.  So the first few weeks here have been spent replacing batteries, installing an invertor, trying to figure out why the air horn trips the circuit breaker, replacing the starboard alternator, replacing the shore power cord, setting up the generator with it's own battery, trying to get the outboard motor on the dinghy to run and servicing the generator.  I still need to get some electronics updated, but haven't been able to make any progress on that. So these are the not so fun parts!

Finally got the new name on the boat

The Vol Navy has made a a great showing so far.  Lots of boats came early to get a good spot for Georgia weekend.  It's so much fun to get back together with old friends and meet some new ones.  Tailgating on the river is a different experience.  We've had bands, tv shows and lots of boat parties and that's just the first three games.

It has been a few weeks since I started this post.  The season has progressed and I left to go back to South Carolina for about 10 days.  In the past, I never did anything like that because the refrigerators and freezer onboard were always full of food which would have spoiled pretty quickly!  This year there wasn't much so I just emptied everything and turned off all the power.  My friends live on their boat which is right beside me, so I felt confident that everything would be fine and it was!

Can't have a post without a night time bridge picture.

Part of the Navy is always at Calhoun's.

For the Arkansas game, we were invited to go sit in the Chancellor Emeritus skybox on the east side.  I've been in one of UT's skyboxes on the west side many years ago, but nowhere else.  That was back in the early 2000's and it was a very formal, jacket and tie, kind of event.  Thankfully, all that has changed - at least on the other side of the field - and it was a very casual atmosphere.  We went down to on the field at half time to get an up close view of the band which was a lot of fun.  Game was a bit too close, but the Vols got a "W" so all was well.

There are only two more home games before I leave to start the voyage to South Carolina.  My new electronics are installed so that is a blessing.  Almost everything else that needed updating or repair is done or will be in the next couple of weeks.  Now I can focus on learning how to operate my new chart plotter!  Seems like it might be a little more complicated than expected.

If you happen to be walking down the Greenway beside the river and end up under the bridge, stop by and say hello!