Countdown to Departure

Wow has time flown by since I retired!  That 3-1/2 months was like the blink of an eye, but we have been busy and gotten a lot of things completed to get ready to start the adventure that has been a dream since buying the boat.  In the mist of all that, we managed to take a couple of trips, celebrate some milestone birthdays and get ready for a wedding.  The Vol Navy had to be put on hold this year and we will not make all of the games, but it's still football season so we just watch everything else on TV. Not the same as the "live action", but still fun.

So here we are 30 days before the beginning of our departure on America's Great Loop. I've got a 42 page "plan" covering 177 segments, ±6,650 miles spread over 12 months. That plan has been revised many times and I can only guess at how many more changes will be made as we cruise along.  Hurricane Irma has played havoc with a part of this voyage. We really want to spend time in South Florida and the Keys. Some locations suffered a lot of damage, some escaped intact, some are still making repairs and some may not reopen. Fortunately there are some websites to help get information on what is available so we will have to adjust as we go. A part of the adventure that can't be predicted.

Our home for the next year is pretty close to ready to go. The dingy and davit were installed in July, the bottom has new paint, anodes have been changed to aluminum to work in both fresh and salt water. The engines and generator got their valves adjusted along with oil and filter changes. Marine diesel fuel systems are a little different than a car and have extra filtration so all 6 of those filters have been changed. Final days will be spent getting charts, guides, bicycles, clothes and food on-board and unneeded items off.  We will have a month to test out our selections as the plan is to return to Atlanta for Christmas then resume the trip just before New Year's Day.

My goal is to keep,this blog going for the entire Loop.  I'm not sure exactly how it will play out. Maybe about once a week or so I'll post our progress. There will be some great sights along the way and some places where we will have extended stops. Here are a few pictures to whet your appetite. Maybe you can guess what they are, if not, stay tuned and I will fill you in as we reach them!!

The End of an Era and a New Adventure

I've been quite remiss in keeping up with this blog, but we're nearing a milestone that will be the start of the next set of adventures.  My retirement date is set for June 30.  So 7 days before my 70th birthday, I'll join all the rest of my unemployed friends in the great happy hour of life!  Or is that the early bird special??

The old saying "time flies" is certainly true!  Unfortunately as I get older, there's not even the need to add the "when you're having fun" portion to that.  Days, weeks, months and years zoom past way too quickly.  So it's equally hard to believe that four years have past since we bought our boat.  That was a day not soon to be forgotten nor was the next month and a half that went by before we could get to Louisiana to actually take possession of the vessel.  A lot has changed since that day when we arrived in Slidell to find the boat tied up to an old wooden fixed dock requiring a 30" step up or down to get aboard.

On the dock at GulfSouth Yacht Works  

The adventure of making the trip from Slidell to Chattanooga was key in cementing the idea of doing the cruise referred to as " America's Great Loop".  There's a book titled Honey Let's Get a Boat which tells the story of a couple who buy their first boat in Florida and take off to do the trip.  You can find lots of websites and stories about this route. So for the last two and a half years, I've been planning and working on things that will make the trip easier, safer and hopefully a little less expensive.  The trip will have us traveling about 6,500 miles round trip beginning in Chattanooga and returning to our starting point.  There will be about 180 actual travel days, but when you add in weather and stops at places along the way, the whole thing will take about a year to complete.

The Great Loop Map

So we're well ahead of the couple in the book who jumped on board and took off cold. We plan to start the trip in late November this year.  I haven't figured out how all of the nitty-gritty details will work like how to do oil changes along the way, what is the best way to deal with mail, what happens if something breaks, how do I get a package shipped to myself and the list goes on. So starting in July, I will have a job to do.

Most of the boat upgrades are finished.  A fresh coat of bottom paint and the mounting of davits for our dinghy are still to be done.  The bugs are pretty much worked out of the new systems we've added and things are starting to become familiar.  There are still surprises as we learn about little hidden things on-board like generator circuit breakers which aren't in the electrical panels.

Sitting on the Dock of the River

Now its time to get ready for nice weather to return.  Spring outings are chances to get out and enjoy the scenery and maybe locate a new place to go.  Summer will come and go too quickly like always.  We will not be in Vol Navy for football season this year so that we can prepare for the November departure.  I'll try to keep the blog going throughout the trip so you can follow along on our new adventure.                                    

Is it football yet?

This has been a strange summer.  It seems as though the entire season just vanished somewhere and it happened over night.  June was here and Chattanooga had Riverbend.  Then somehow the calendar said it is almost the end of August.  Now that's just WRONG!!

I think it must have had to do with the way July 4th landed on the calendar.  That's the holiday, fireworks show and the week in Maryland that happens every year between Regina's birthday and mine.  

To celebrate her's, we went to the Biltmore in Ashville.  That place is really amazing as well as the way the Vanderbilt's lived and how the mansion got built.  This time we did a plantation tour which takes you off the beaten path to see some of the history and workings of the Estate. Of course, there's the afternoon visit to the winery and the food at their restaurants is fantastic.

Our annual trip to Maryland to visit our friends, Tom and Teresa, has become a tradition. This year, Brittany came from Texas to join us for a few days.  As always, the shrimp, crab and lobster were to die for and we ate until we rolled back onto the plane.  Tom and I started the week in his bilge replacing the water pump impeller on the generator.  Here I discovered about the only thing easier to get to on my boat than his.  What an exercise that was!  Much of the rest of the week was spent playing on his dinghy and visiting marine stores to help me figure out what kind I will ultimately buy.   

By the time that we had finished all of those activities, it was late July and we had missed over a month of boating on our Chattanooga lakes.  So now we are trying to catch up on river fun.  One weekend we went downtown for a River Front Nights concert, the next weekend was a big raft up with other Erwin Marina folks and then there was rain.  I guess we could have gone and anchored out somewhere in the rain, but it's more fun when the sun is shining and you can play in the water.  To make up for that, we went to the movies.

This weekend is forecast to be nice.  A couple of my projects are getting close to being completed.  There are only about two weeks left before we make the trip up river for football season!  I have a spot in the marina where we stayed last year lined up.  The Vols are predicted to be a much better team this year so that's very exciting.  We're going to be back in the Vol Navy and hopefully celebrating some big wins!!  GO BIG ORANGE.  We'll be there soon.

Spring sprung and summer is near

When the weather got cold and boating season basically ended, so did my blog.  There was not a lot of boating done this winter.  In some ways, I'm surprised we didn't do more.  It certainly wasn't as cold or snowy or iced over like a year ago.

So winter went by with some trips to Chattanooga to change oil and transmission fluid.  We went to the Miami Boat Show in February to investigate a number of additions that are on our list.  During that trip, I discovered that my air filters needed to be changed (read replaced) with the new upgraded model.  Now instead of boring old black filters on my engines, I have pretty new blue ones!!

And the reason they turn blue, is the color of the oil that you coat the filter media with.  All those other pieces and O-rings are buried inside the housing behind the blue filter.

This was our first trip to the Miami show.  We've done the Ft Lauderdale show a few times, but never this one.  It was overwhelming and virtually impossible to locate the dealers/booths that you want to find.  Obviously, they need an architect to help them with everything from graphics to layout.  (I wonder how I can turn that into my retirement job??)  In any event, we had a great trip.  Our friends from Maryland came down and met us for the show and that always makes things more fun.  We walked until we couldn't anymore, got more info than we could or wanted to carry, ate some great food and came home with more ideas.

A few of our ideas are beginning to take shape.  The generator now has an hour meter that a human being can read.  Our bilge heaters have their own outlets so the floor isn't covered with extension cords anymore.  A new VHF radio along with a AIS transponder are waiting to be installed.  The inverter that will be used to keep the generator from running non-stop is in the garage until my electrical guy figures out how we are going to tie it, the batteries and new solar panels together. And we have a new floor covering in the cockpit!!  This doesn't seem like a big deal until you have had to try to clean black marks off of white, non-slip fiberglass.  Oh do I love this stuff!!

 

The not so great part of our spring was finding the bottom of Chickamauga near Island Cove Marina. That turn out to be a very unpleasant experience. So I've been told that there are only those who have run aground and those that will - hopefully having now joined the club that means I don't have to do it again to maintain membership. Anyway, what ever was down there, in the middle of their marked channel BTW, was hard enough to bend both props. BoatUS had to pull us off so got to add that to the list of "done that's". 

While not officially summer, it is Memorial Day weekend. Our daughter is in from Texas and we're back to Bluff dock in Chattanooga. Time to enjoy her short visit and have some fun on board.   There are some festival events happening in town over the weekend so after we check those out we will take a run back up river to Paradise cove.  That is a popular place near Harrison Bay and is usually packed with boats and all variety of activities.  So the Flag is flying and this day set aside to remember all those who sacrificed everything for us to be able to enjoy all these freedoms.   Let's take this time to honor, to salute and to thank them.  That's what we will do as we end this spring weekend.   

Fall Becomes Winter

I haven't been as diligent as last year writing about our on-the-water adventures.  Three months ago, it was time to begin the trip to start football season and last weekend was the trip back to Chattanooga marking the end of that part of the year.  Yes, there is one more game to go and hopefully a bowl game after that, but the Vol Navy has disbursed until next August.  We had some huge weekends with probably two hundred boats on the docks and the last couple with less than forty there.  Either way, it is an unbelievable way to go to a ball game - just too much fun.

Our trip to Knoxville back in August was pretty much uneventful.  Exactly how you want to make any boat trip - no events!  We had no delays getting through the locks and stayed basically ahead of schedule.  The first weekend is always huge.  It's the Boomsday fireworks show and Vols home opener.  The game got moved to Sunday night for the beginning of the SEC Network game broadcasts, but the docks were already crowded by the time we arrived on Friday.  Not to worry, we got a spot in row one at Calhoun's for a perfect view with no ash on the boat this time!

First row on right - third boat in - Boomsday

We had a different temporary marina this year.  Mike, the Harbormaster at Lousiville, found us a slip for three months.  We really enjoyed our experience there.  They had several live-aboards on the dock where we were assigned who welcomed us like family.  Every time we came back into the dock there was at least one person, if not four, who were there to meet us and grab lines.  Hopefully, there will be a place for us there next year.  Thanks Mike for giving us a second home.

Brittany came for the UT Chattanooga game.  That was Homecoming weekend with the Walking Horse on the field.  Only downside was that it rained almost all the time EXCEPT during the game.  My frat brother's wife brought Mom into town for dinner that Friday night and the meal at Ruth's Chris was excellent.  Thanks for doing that Debby - we all really appreciated it.

Regina's brother and his girlfriend came with us to the Alabama game.  It was their first time to be on the boat and we all had a good time.  Somehow the Armybama fan managed to stay on board without tumbling overboard.  After a slow start, our young team did better this year against Satin, some other lame yahoo he hired, and his team of professional athletes.  Give Butch a little more time and I'm thinking the tide will turn - pun intended!!

Last Sunday, we started the trip back to Chattanooga.  We had a plan laid out, but it didn't pan out as intended.  All had been so smooth on the trip up that I neglected to phone Ft Loudon lock on the way down-stream.  When we arrived there, our plan was to fuel up at the marina and then zip on down river.  Unfortunately, the Bearcat tow with his six barges as already there so we waited for three hours to lock down.  Sunday night was at Blue Springs Marina where we arrived with the rain and wind.  Not much sleep in 30 knot gusts and waves on the stern.  Monday morning found us racing the Bearcat again to Watts Bar lock, but he had a head start and we spent four hours waiting to slide through while he retrieved his last two barges.  From there, it was three hours of running wide open to get back to Erwin and into our slip just before dark.

Season is over.  Winter is here.  Heaters are on.  Now it's time to change the oil and get ready for spring.

Ft Loudon Marina

On the T before Homecoming

The Horse

Checker Neyland

Chillin' pregame

Here we go...........

Vol Navy at dusk

Cheers!!

Last trip down - early start

What Happened?

Poof - Summer is gone and football season has arrived!  Now that just doesn't seem possible.   The last time I did a post - at RPA we were having our corporate retreat in Chattanooga, the boat was being pulled to check out the bottom and summer was just getting ready to begin.  Today we are on the way back to Knoxville to rejoin the Vol Navy. In between, we had a very busy summer with several trips, the Riverbend concerts and not as many weekends on the boat as expected.  I got a number of improvements made like satellite TV, new cleats and battery monitors and some of the electronics that weren't working repaired.  Got to get this baby ready to travel!

However, now it's Vol Navy time. This year we are moving to Louisville Landing for the season which means that the trip on game weekends will be shorter. The marina is also easier to get to than Choto was last year. No diesel fuel there, but we can fuel up downtown when needed. I'm hopeful that this is going to be as good a place as it seems after visiting and checking out the facilities.  It looks like it's well kept, clean and most important flat!  The mountain at Choto with no dock carts was not so much fun.

The trip from Chattanooga to Knoxville is 176 miles - 76 more miles than driving up the interstate. Leg one is 60 miles to Watts Bar Dam where we will anchor out for the night. Day two will be 70 miles to Fort Loudon Marina for an overnight. On Friday, we have to stop at Louisville to find our slip location and then book it to Calhoun's and find a raft up spot. My guess is that there will already be a lot of boats already there to claim their space for Boomsday and the ball game.

For years I had dreamed of someday being a part of the Navy.  There were recent years when it seemed that there was no chance of ever making it happen.  Our experiences last year of getting the boat, learning about not just driving it but maintaining it and doing football season with the Navy was amazing. As we begin this portion of season two, I am sure it going to be as much fun if not more. We made new friends on the docks at Calhoun's  and I must believe they will be back again. Every weekend there are old friends, frat brothers and new acquaintances at the party. Someone asked what time the shenanigans will begin this weekend. It almost feels as if they already have.

Time to start the next phase of season two. Let's hope for better days for the Vols. Go Big Orange!!

The First Year

Each year Memorial Day signals the beginning of summer, but last year it was the beginning of our first year of owning a boat. If you kept up, you read about our adventure crossing the Gulf, coming up the Tenn-Tom and the Tennessee River to Chattanooga. After spending the summer boating around Chickamauga and downtown, we went up river to Knoxville for football season with the Vol Navy.  Survived an insane winter and got ready for spring to arrive.

Before going any further, I must again say that I am forever indebted to my long time friend Tom. He came from Maryland to make the trip from Louisiana with us. There is no way we could have done it without him and there could have been no better Captain to be our "trainer" to get us ready to be on our own after the trip was finished. On that 850 mile trip, we did it all - including 19 locks over 10 days. Trial by fire has never had a more clear meaning!  Wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.

Now we start year two and what better way than for our daughter to come from Houston to spend a week with us. We have spent the last five days on the boat with Brittany having a great time. On day one, we went up stream to Amigos Mexican restaurant at Island Cove Marina. This was the first time we had taken the boat into the restaurant dock. It was pretty easy as no one was there when we arrived so we could pick our spot on the somewhat small but adequate dock for our short stay. Day two was spent on the hook at Booker T slew where we just chilled and grilled out. Our dock neighbors Doc and Liz rafted us with us for the day and brought a batch of Hillbilly Juice - whoa that stuffs' got some kick!

The next two days we spent on Bluff Dock in downtown Chattanooga. First day we rode the free shuttle to the old train station. There is a model train museum at the Choo Choo that is worth a visit. We didn't get to see the inside of a train car, but the gift shop visit made up for it.  The next day, we spent about 4 hours at the Aquarium. Britt had been there but Reg and I had not. Well worth the time to do it. I had no idea what a great job Chattanooga had done in developing this cornerstone of the waterfront.

On Memorial Day, we left the dock a little past noon and took a little cruise toward Moccasin Bend. We checked the river view of a new residential development that is being started downtown that should be very nice. After that we headed for the lock as the last boat in a group of five which included a large houseboat. Those folks were actually grilling on their top deck as we "locked up".  The smell of burgers on the grill while in the lock is just not fair if you're not going to share!  Someone needs to make a rule about that - who am I supposed to call?

Now the holiday is over and Brittany is back in Texas. Riverbend starts the first weekend of June and we will be back for that. This ten day music festival on the waterfront is so much fun that, after we discovered it, we have not missed one since. At any given time, at least five different groups are performing.  Whatever kind of music you enjoy, there will be something for you. Just wish we had known about it sooner!

Happy summer!  Do something that you have always wanted to do and don't put it off. There are no guarantees of another day.