On The Road Again...

It seems as though it has been forever since we traveled. Well, that is if you don’t count the trip (75 miles each way) down to the boatyard for repairs after the electric pedestal on the dock “fried” some of our wiring & switches last June.

It has been a long, hot summer in northern Alabama and we have been content to lie in the shade of a covered dock and run the air conditioning. We also made a few road trips; because I agreed to do some work for Bereaved Parents we went to a work session in Dallas in June and the Annual Conference in Little Rock in July. Of course we went to Boise in August and stopped in St. Louis on the way through for our own “well baby” check-ups.

The highlight of the entire summer was taking Lauren to Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks. What fun we had wading in the water and watching elk and climbing trees. Oh yeah, Yellowstone, we saw Old Faithful put on its show and then we climbed the stairs in Old Faithful Inn (several times) and ate ice cream on the porch.

Little Anna is the happiest toddler, which shouldn’t surprise us because she was a happy baby. She is walking now, and loves being outdoors; I call her Sunshine because her smile lights up the room. It was really fun watching her wind grandpa around her finger. She would go looking for him calling “Grandpa”, or something pretty close to that, and he would do whatever she asked.

Back home aboard we cleaned a month’s accumulation of spider poop off the boat, restocked the larder, shopped for “stuff” that we thought we needed and generally got ready to get underway.

Last week we made a short run up to Scottsboro, AL and it was great to be going somewhere. Our plan had been to hang out a few days in a favorite anchorage up there but when we pulled into the anchorage and throttled back it was HOT without a breath of air moving. We looked at each other and decided we would not get any sleep in the heat and decided to pull in to one of our favorite marinas, Goose Pond Colony. That is what is so great about the cruising life since your home moves with you your travel plans can change in a minute. On the dock there we were met by friends (another great thing about cruising) and we enjoyed 4 days of happy hours, dinners and fellowship before we had to leave. It was in the mid 90’s every day and we never did get to that favorite anchorage but we sure enjoyed the trip.

Yesterday we departed our summer home at Bay Hill Marina in company with two other boats and started off on a new adventure. We managed to travel all of 10 miles before we stopped for brunch at Joe Wheeler State Park where friends from Bay Hill drove down to help us eat! Fully sated we made it another 3 miles before we anchored to take naps and read the Sunday newspaper.

Our plan is to head down the Tenn-Tom to the Black Warrior River and follow it up to Tuscaloosa. The Warrior runs all the way to Birmingham and is not often traveled by pleasure boaters. We are not sure what we will find, perhaps a lot of nothing, but it will be fun to explore with good company. This morning it was pouring rain and since we start off with two locks in the first 18 miles we line tenders (that would be me and the other wives) voted to sit the day out and wait for tomorrow’s good weather to travel.

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.

At Home in Columbus

When we get to Columbus it feels like coming home.  We have spent time here in the past and the marina staff are like old friends.  We know where to find things and best places to eat in town.  We can leave Miss Lauren Grace and feel confident they will keep an eye on her while we are away.
Since getting here we have been busy moving the truck up from Florida and getting ready to go to Boise (yea!).  We leave in a day or so and hope to be back by May 5th or 6th and continue on up the rivers somewhere.

Yesterday I was doing laundry and the preliminary packing, as well as trying to catch up on computer work and finish these blog entries.  Larry was making sure the truck was ready to travel and doing a few boat chores.  This afternoon we looked up and noticed a really big boat making its way to the dock, naturally Larry had to go and investigate.

The boat was the American Canadian Cruise Lines 175' Niagara Prince, we understand that she was cruising from New Orleans to Knoxville.  At various times of the year the Niagara Prince and her sister ships the Grande Mariner & the Grande Caribe cruise the waters from New Orleans to Chicago, the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway from the Bahamas to New York, the Erie Canal, Lake Ontario and the coast of Maine & Nova Scotia.  Each vessel carries 65 to 100 passengers and the fares range from about $3,500 to $6,000 per person.  They have some neat sounding itineraries and it would be a great way to see the waterways if you aren't interested in boat ownership.

You know that we boat owners are always thinking about the next boat, aka as a bigger boat; but I gotta' tell you that I wouldn't relish the idea of backing something like this into a dock!

Morning on the Water

Many of you know that Larry and I prefer to not actually witness sunrise. We have a zillion photos (oops, don’t let the folks up in Washington hear that there is such a number... at least not with a $$$ sign in front of it) of sunsets but very few of sunrise.  Sometimes though, when we are traveling, early departures are just unavoidable. However after eaving Mobile while traveling up the Tenn-Tom Waterway anchorages and marinas are few and far between making long days, and thus early departures, a necessary evil.

I must admit that on a warm, sunny morning it is a sublime experience to listen to the bird songs and enjoy the morning hush before we crank up the noisy old CATS to get underway. Not that I want to make a habit of it mind you, because those sunsets and twilight can be pretty spectacular too.

Spring morning at Sumter Morning Anchorage above Demopolis.  This is one of our favorite anchorages

The reason we choose to get underway early rather than enjoy that extra sleep in the morning is because on this particular stretch of water you never know what you might find. The river is constantly changing and shifting and silting in; if we arrive at a planned anchorage late and find that it has shoaled too much for us to enter we may not have enough daylight to find a safe haven. By starting early we can stop early if our planned anchorage is good, if it is not then we have a window of time to push farther before dark.  Then again late afternoon in a quiet anchorage is hard to beat, especially with scenes like this to enjoy

Generally we plan on it being a 5 day trip upstream from Mobile to Columbus, MS, this year was no exception.  This trip we encountered a lot of current below Coffeeville Lock probably due to two factors. First the river is tidal all the way to Coffeeville and the tide was against us and secondly there had been some rain about 24 hours before we started up and the river drains a large area in the mountains of Alabama. Tributaries include the Alabama River that goes to Montgomery and the Black Warrior that goes to Birmingham. The only real harm was that we had to push the power up to meet our goals which resulted in burning a little more fuel this trip. Basically I guess we spent what we saved last fall with the fast current taking us down. 

High water levels and the fast currents associated with it, along with wake from the many boats (commercial, recreational, and local) combine to wreck havoc with the riverbanks along much of the waterway

You can see that the landowners try just about anything to save their bank.  Here the big home has had old concrete paving trucked in & dumped.  We also see old tires, wood or concrete bulkhead and regular rip-rap stone.  It appears none are totally successful.

Notice the size of the tree that was eroded to the point that it just fell over.

The home/cabin below has been abandoned and none too soon, you can see that the front corner is no longer supported. 

The scenery is diverse as you can see, the white cliffs are near Epes and they are not limestone but a chalk like rock that is even softer than limestone. I find it interesting that on one side are these high nearly pure white rock banks, while only a few miles up or downstream the rock is grey with the rusty streaks from minerals in the runoff water.

 At anchorage in pretty little Foscue Creek near Demopolis, AL we saw the USCG Buoy Tender Wedge moored at the Coast Guard Station there. They could really have used a little of her services on the river below Demopolis where many of the navigation marks have fallen victim to the erosion mentioned above.

This Daymark is about to become another victim of the bank erosion.

On our last day before reaching Columbus we passed a string of nice homes and one had this houseboat sitting out front. This has to be one of my favorite ever boat names!

Busy Times in Port of Mobile

When we came up Mobile Bay last week we realized that it’s been four years since we first brought Lauren Grace up from the Gulf on our first cruise with her. A lot has changed in those years, not the least of which was the increase in activity that we observed in the Port of Mobile. There is a huge new cruise ship that was put into service last fall; unfortunately she was not in port the day we transited so I couldn’t include a photo of her. I did get these shots of container ships being loaded. I hope that you can see the crane setting the blue container (looks like a boxcar) in its place on the stack in this photo

In this shot the huge tugboat is applying pressure to keep the ship tight against the wharf during the loading process. Partly this is necessary because of the wakes caused by the activity in the area and partly due to the effect that the tide has on the current and thus the movement of the ship

This shot is of a “dry-dock”. In other words a ship is pushed into this docking device, the water is pumped out and the dock with the ship is raised to the surface in order to provide a dry platform from which to work on the ship. The tarp is probably not hiding any trade secrets; rather it is being used to contain the dust & material sanded from the ship’s hull.

Industry in Mobile is doing better than in many places during this downturn. The shipbuilding firm Austal, working in some sort of partnership with General Dynamics just completed one of the Navy’s new littoral combat ships – LCS2 now known as the U.S.S. Independence. We were lucky enough to actually get to see the new LCS as she was moored in the shipyard when we came down to Mobile last fall. They are claiming that the tri-maran can move its weapons around faster than any other ship in the Navy.  The top photo below shows the Mobile skyline in the background as she is underway and the bottom photo is how we saw her last fall.  Disregard the date stamp on the bottom picture, I got this from another source because we were a little too busy dodging debris to take any photos last fall.

Do yourself a favor and follow the links above to learn more about the newest ship in our Navy’s line.  By the way littoral means “close to shore”, and that's where these ships will operate. They're tailor-made for launching helicopters and armored vehicles, sweeping mines and firing all manner of torpedoes, missiles and machine guns.

Austal also built the gigantic and controversial Hawaiian “super ferry”.

This cool picture is of the LCS2 sitting in the ways at the Austal Yard.  Larry thinks this shot is awesome.

A short distance up the Mobile River from the actual Port work is progressing on the huge new ThyssenKrupp Steel and Stainless USA  mill that will be one of the world’s most sophisticated carbon and stainless steel processing facilities. I read somewhere that the project is currently the largest private industrial investments in the U.S.  It is a welcome case of job in-sourcing in the U.S. at a time when many companies are moving jobs overseas. The project will create an estimated 2,700 permanent jobs domestically when it becomes fully operational in 2010.

I’m guessing that means that traffic will continue to increase on this stretch of water.

Here you can see the work being done at the loading docks for the steel mill

Miss Lauren Grace is on the Move

I almost hesitate to say it but I have decided to be bold and say that spring has finally sprung. For the past 10 days the weather has been glorious here on the Northern Gulf Coast and we have been enjoying it.

With friends aboard we left our friendly winter home, Port St. Joe Marina, on the first day of spring and had a beautiful ride outside to Panama City. For you non-boaters out there the term “outside” means that a boat travels in the large body of water (in this case the Gulf of Mexico) as opposed to traveling in the ICW which is generally more protected. It’s nice to run outside because it is often (but not always) a shorter distance and there aren’t any “no wake zones”; it can be rough out there as well so we try to pick & choose our days and that day was glorious. The forecast however was for deteriorating weather so we decided to forego a planned return visit to Crooked Island, where the photos below were snapped, (see entry dated March 13, 2010) and head on into a marina in Panama City. This proved to be a VERY good decision.

The next morning was windy and cloudy with rain in the forecast. Our friends, Pete & Linda, had driven down and thanks to a little help from friends on "Eagle One" we had already positioned a car in Panama City with an eye to playing automobile hopscotch across the Panhandle.  By doing this we could ensure that their car would be available when they were ready to drive home. Accordingly we took advantage of the rainy day to send the boys back to PSJ to manage a car switcheroo. While they were gone the front came through and we saw nearly 3 foot waves in the marina, most definitely this was not the sort of day to go “outside”!! Heck, for a while it was so rough that we didn't feel comfortable trying to get off the boat and to the dock. Thank goodness that extreme only lasted for 3-4 hours before things began to calm down.

After a long layover at PC waiting for the winds to settle down we enjoyed a nice ride across Choctawhatchee Bay (see entry dated January 19, 2010) before taking another lay day in Fort Walton and then enjoying a beautiful anchorage near Pensacola. Continuing west we had a fun lunch at Lu-Lu’s (a restaurant owned by Jimmy Buffet's "Crazy Sista", Lucy) and a spectacular anchorage in one of our favorite places, Ingram Bayou, before Pete & Linda had to leave us and head back to work.

After a calm run up Mobile Bay we arrived in Fairhope, AL (one of our favorite places, in fact we might just move here when we grow up) for a quick visit with our old friends the Kelley's.  Reluctantly we left there on Wednesday and ran across to the West side of Mobile Bay to fuel up and wait out a day of bad weather before we begin our trek North on the Tenn-Tom. I had hoped to snag a courtesy car for a visit to see the spring blooms at Bellingrath Gardens while we were here in Dog River but none was available so we amused ourselves by fighting off noseeums (which were biting like the devil) and watching this pelican fish for his dinner.

We are set to head North tomorrow, hopefully the rains will hold off for another week and we will have an easy run with very little current as we head up to Columbus, MS where we hope to leave the boat while we go to Boise and visit the girls

Crooked Island, a little piece of paradise

It finally feels as though Winter might be loosening its grip on the Panhandle, I say "might" because as I write this the wind is once again blowing 25 mph from the NW (with gusts even higher). Last weekend though was glorious, calm, warm, and sunny so we went boating.


About 20 miles to the North of Port St. Joe there is a little anchorage right off the Gulf of Mexico that has been calling our name (however not loudly enough to entice us away from the electric heat, until now). The name of this little slice of heaven is Crooked Island, all fall and winter we have heard how beautiful it is, how great the shelling is, how deserted it is. Last weekend the weather was finally perfect for a run up to check it out and we were so excited to untie our dock lines and see for ourselves. Oh my it was all that and more! We headed out armed with the way points that the locals here use to get over the bar and into the anchorage, and in the company of our friends Ed & Lucy aboard their boat "I Love Lucy". Our plan was to rendezvous with another boat, "Sea Sea" coming down from Panama City and spend a couple of lazy days at anchor and enjoying the beach. I love it when a plan comes together without a hitch!


The sky was crystal clear, the sunsets were spectacular, the shelling was unbelievable. Part of the reason for the great shelling is that the only way to get to this beach is by boat so things aren't picked over by a zillion other tourists. We must have found over fifty sand dollars in just a couple of hours. After seeing the prices of these sand dollars in the tourist shops I sure think the name is appropriate.


An interesting thing about Crooked Island is that the North border of the bay where we anchored is part of Tyndall AFB. One of the things they do at Tyndall is to shoot drones into the Gulf. I thought they were doing this just for our Monday entertainment but Larry assures me there is a more compelling reason. The mission here is to train pilots to intercept and destroy enemy missiles and aircraft. From the shoreline on the North side of our anchorage rocket fired drones are launched out into the Gulf at subsonic speeds, planes then seek to intercept and destroy them. When these exercises are being conducted boaters are restricted from traveling in the "launch corridor"; this means that if you are passing by in the Gulf you must be some distance off of the shore. How far off depends on the instructions that they announce on the radio, sometimes 3 miles and occasionally as much as 12 miles off shore. Boats anchored in the bay must be on the far East end, if you are anchored to the West of their imaginary line you will be required to leave or to move farther East. If you are on the beach they will come and tell you to remain to the East of the "line". These precautions are to ensure that boaters and beachcombers are safe from harm when the booster rockets drop off, or in the event any of these devices crash as they are launched.

This was just another really cool opportunity that our somewhat unusual lifestyle affords us. I mean how many people even know this kind of thing happens, sure if you think about it it makes logical sense but I never actually bothered to think about it before.