Where Does the Time Go?

When we first moved aboard back in 2006 (yes, it has been four years now) many people asked what we would do with all our time. I still can’t answer that question but we always seem to be busy. Actually when I realized that it has been two months since I updated our whereabouts I found myself wondering where that time had gone and what had we been doing that I have not felt exciting enough to share with you.


Aside from out trip to see the girls at the end of April (just after my last posting) I can’t say we have done much that is worth sharing and so I haven’t felt compelled to bore you with the details. Still, people have been asking for updates so here goes.

The trip to Boise was wonderful, as always. Lauren is now a quite mature 5 (“and ½” thank you very much), “You know that you are 5 ½ before you turn 6 Grammy” she told me. She organizes our visits and plans activities; swinging at the park (“watch, I can pump myself now”), lunch at McDonalds play place for chilly/rainy days, playtime, story-time etc. Anna is an adorable 16 months (or was when we saw her); she is just starting to walk, loves rhythm and is generally a joyful little dickens. We were pleased that she was not at all shy with us this visit, she loves being held by Grandpa and would reach for Larry whenever he was in the room.

We got back home at the end of the first week in May and slowly made our way north, up the Tenn- Tom, when we got to Bay Springs lake we stopped for a week just to enjoy the crystal clear waters of that lake. This is land that was inundated when the Waterway was built and is thus a young lake, there is no development along its shores and since the land is heavily wooded there is not as much runoff as in many lakes. We enjoyed anchoring in several spots sometimes with a panoramic view and a delightful breeze and sometimes in a cozy little hole where the wind and waves from storms couldn’t reach us.

Then reality intruded and we had to move on. Why? Well, for one thing it was getting HOT and we wanted to plug in and enjoy sleeping in air conditioned comfort. Yes we do remember spending every hot summer weekends on our sailboat with only a fan to keep us comfortable, but that was then (or maybe we were younger), now when the nights are warm we head for electricity.

Our trip up the Tennessee from Pickwick Lake was interesting….Now I must ask our non boating readers to bear with me while I share the “Locking Thru Story from Hell” with the boaters. From our anchorage in Panther Creek on Pickwick Lake it was 59 miles to Joe Wheeler State Park where we planned to anchor for the night before running the final 10 miles to our destination of Bay Hill Marina; we also had to transit two locks. This is a nice day’s travel for us, especially with the long hours of daylight this time of year and so we left our anchorage about 8:30 that morning, expecting to be anchored by late-afternoon. The first 3 hours passed uneventfully, we saw no commercial traffic nor did we hear any on the VHF radio on channel 13 or 16.

About noon we were probably 30 minutes below Wilson Lock and just about ready to call and let him know we were headed his way when we heard a TVA boat call. Wilson Lock answered and told him that they were working the first cut of a double and then they would get him right through. We called and put our name on the list and slowed down, had lunch and figured we were in for a wait, little did we know how much of a wait!

We arrived at the lock at 12:55 and were a bit surprised to find that the second cut was not yet in the chamber. We also noted that the TVA boat was a single barge and not red-flagged, this was good news since he might let us lock with him. The tow that was in process was the “William Hank” and it seemed as though he was never going to get situated in the lock but finally the gate closed on his second cut.

For the non-boaters that are still with me a “cut” is when a towboat and all of the barges together is longer than the lock chamber; then they push in the half of the barges, disconnect the front barges from the back barges, pull the back half of the barges out (still attached to the tow boat), close the gates and raise (or lower) the front set of barges and winch them out along the lock wall. Then they close the gates, lower/raise the water in the chamber and push in the second half of the barges and the towboat and raise/lower them. Once all of the tow is at the same river level they reconnect the two sets and push out of the lock. Normally the process takes no more than 2 ½ hours; on May 19, 2010 it took a lot longer.

As I said they apparently started locking the "William Hank" before Noon and had the first cut up when we arrived at 12:55 and were working to get the second cut in. From our location we could not see the reason for the hold-up and we could not find the radio channel that they were working on so we could not hear anything either. Lockmasters are not generally chatty, at least not with us “RVs” as they call pleasure boats, and so we had no idea what was happening or how long it would take. Time passed….then more time. At some point Larry called the TVA boat and asked if he was agreeable to us locking through with him if the lockmaster would allow it. “Sure, and he will probably not have any problem with it”, this at least was good news.

Finally about 3:15 he called for the TVA boat to come in and us to follow when he called for us. By 3:52 we were motoring out of Wilson Lock and planning to put it in roar and beat the “William Hank” to Wheeler Lock only 15 miles up the lake; I mean towboats generally travel slower than we do and we can go fast when we need to so we had a plan. Wrong! When we got to the top we could not even see the “William Hank”. We hoped, briefly, that he had gone into a port but we didn’t know where because Wilson Lake is not at all industrial. Twenty minutes later we saw him, he was over halfway up the lake and steaming toward the lock….no way could we catch him. At 4:20 we pulled our power back and slowly made our way to the lock. We arrived about 5:00 and were dismayed to see that he did not yet have the first cut in. We couldn’t tie to the lock wall because he was still using it so we dropped the anchor and prepared to wait.

Remember we had planned to be anchored for the night an hour ago. Wilson Lake is very deep and has few anchorages, we considered going back downstream five miles or so and anchoring for the night but the days were long and so we decided to wait it out rather than take our chances in the morning. Bad decision.

By 5:45 the first cut was in, at 6:50 the second cut was entering the chamber and at 7:05 the gates closed to raise the second cut. Now we figure only 45 minutes or so and he will be out. Not exactly! Due to configuration problems that are too complex to go into here there was a problem re-connecting the two sections of the tow and it was slightly after 8:00 before they cold close the upper gates and start lowering the chamber for us. By now it was dark and I was on the deck waiting to untie from the lock wall (where we had moved to after the second cut went in so that we would be ready to scoot in quickly). So I lost track of time but when I checked my watch at 8:20 (don’t you love those Indiglo watches?) the gates still had not opened for us to enter. Shortly after that we got the green light and our ride up. When we got to the top there was down-bound tow waiting on the wall and his spotlight light was in our face as we slowly inched our way out of the lock. By now it was inky black and we chugged our way up to our anchorage in First Creek about 3 ½ miles above the lock. By the time we had our anchor down it was 9:20 at night and we were exhausted. Including our 6 ½ hours of waiting time it had taken 13 hours to travel 59 miles and transit two locks!

The next day we motored the final and uneventful ten miles up to Bay Hill marina and have spent the past month fighting off mayflies, catching up with cruising friends here, and following the oil spill news as we wonder about our winter plans, and being lazy.