Gulf of Mexico or Bust!

So where did I leave off? Florence, that was it.
We woke up yesterday (Nov 7) morning to cold and foggy. Very foggy.

Okay, so the picture doesn't convey the thickness of the fog. But it was really foggy. And it's a nifty pic, right?
So we waited around a while for the fog to burn off. I think we left a little after 8:30 (time change helped us out there). Then we were booking it down river! The GPS clocked us at 7 mph. Whoa! Watch out, world, this sailboat's got rockets! Other than the high speed early in the day, it was pretty uneventful. "Uneventful" is great for cruising, but not so much for people reading about it. The weather warmed up a bit, the wind died a bit. Overall, nice.
We made our way down Pickwick Lake toward Yellow Creek, which is where the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom, for boaters in the know [yes, of course we're in-the-know boaters, c'mon people]) joins up with the Tennessee River. As we got close to the creek, I saw a trawler coming toward us. It had a blue hull, so I knew it wasn't my parents. But there was a white speck coming toward us, too, and that could be them! But the speck stayed a speck for a long time. Then it looked more like a boat. A trawler! A white one with a stripe!! Towing a dingy!!! When Trevor said "Did somebody just wave from that boat?", I got on the VHF and called out "Off Our Rocker, this is Earendil. Is that you?" And it was! We met my parents right at the mouth of Yellow Creek. How cool is that?
So we anchored together for the night, had some supper, did some chatting, looked at pictures, looked at each others' boats. But boy was it cold when we went to bed! Brr! Trevor tossed the sleeping bag on the bed. Excellent idea! We were warm until it was time to get up. Then it was cold again! And condensation everywhere! (You can tell the adventures from last week have worn off, since the condensation gets an exclamation point.)
But the day warmed up quickly. Gorgeous day! We parked the boat at Aqua Yacht Harbor and went grocery shopping. Bought a bigger cooler. Trevor needs orange juice, and I need milk. And we both want sandwiches. (Butter is nice to have, too. Mac & Cheese isn't the same without butter.) Over the last week, we've realized some of the things we don't want to live without. Now we have apples and oranges, too. Awesome!
Had dinner with the parents tonight. They made burgers, and we made mac & cheese (with butter, oh yeah!). Delicious and nutritious. Well, it was delicious, anyway. Then showers (yay!). And now Trevor is doing laundry. Have I mentioned how ridiculously awesome he is? Seriously, so awesome!
Tomorrow, we're finally heading south. We'll be going down a really ugly part of the Tenn-Tom. I'll post pictures of the ugly for you. So you can feel sorry for us. Ha!
But to make up for tomorrow's ugly, I'll post pictures of pretty first!





That picture on the left is fog in Florence (fog always makes good pictures). The right one is the fall colors somewhere (everywhere?) in Pickwick Lake. The last on is a gorgeous (post-card worthy) inlet just before we got to Yellow Creek. Pretty much all of the inlets as we approached the creek were that awesome. One even had a waterfall!
And finally, us!

Alive in Florence!

We are now docked comfortably in Florence, AL. Shore power is plugged up, we ate soup, and Trevor is outside with a caulking gun (get those leaks, baby, get 'em all!). Life right now is pretty sweet. I guess I'll start at the beginning and hit the highlights.
Monday: got up early. Marcus, Shifty, and Jesse came to the dock to see us off. I blasted "I'm on a Boat" to keep those guys from getting all weepy. Then it was a rousing round of "Come Sail Away" while we motored away from the dock (I've been dreaming of that for years!). Got through the Chickamauga Lock with no problem, then got downtown. Downtown Chattanooga is crazy gorgeous from the water! I mean, it's pretty anyway, but whoa! So pretty. Made me want to live there. Oh. I did. Oops. Thaddeus came to see us off from the gorgeous waterfront. So awesome! This picture of us on the boat is one Thaddeus sent us from his phone. Sweet! Then it was a pretty uneventful day. We went about 45 miles and anchored near Shellmound.
Tuesday: Got up early. We were ready to leave at 8:00. But then the anchor wouldn't cooperate. We tugged, pulled, let it sit, went forward, went in reverse. And the thing wouldn't budge. Cutting free an anchor is just not the way to start a year-long boat trip, so we didn't give up. Finally managed to tug it just the right way, and pow! it came loose. Seemed we somehow managed to tangle it around a tree branch. So then we were off, around 9:00. Went through the Nickajack Lock without a problem. Pretty uneventful day. We stopped at Goose Pond marina in Scottsboro and had pizza with my cousins. Awesome!
Wednesday: Another uneventful day. We took our time getting started, then moseyed on down the river. Not much to tell. The scenery was nice. We anchored at my parents' favorite anchorage on the Tennessee River, at mile 350, just up from the Guntersville Lock.
Thursday: Got through the Guntersville Lock without a problem. And then things got rough. As soon as the lock opened, the wind was in our faces. And it blew in our faces pretty much all day. A cold, northerly wind, it made for a slightly less than pleasant ride. Downright miserable, in fact. The final stretch into Decatur was especially rough. We actually had waves rocking the boat. It made the ride kinda fun, for a while.

But after a while it stopped being fun. Luckily, we made it in to the Riverwalk Marina in Decatur. And no one was there to take our money. Free marina! We did eat dinner at their restaurant, though.
Friday: This was planned to be a shorter day, only 28 miles. We had to use starting fluid to start the engine. Maybe the cold weather? And then we were off. Almost immediately, we had to go under a railroad bridge. We had to call them to get it raised up high enough. Pretty cool. Then the wind and waves beat the crap out of us. Once we got past Browns Ferry nuclear plant, the waves were really tossing us around, and we were only going about 2 miles per hour. So we decided it wasn't worth the work and misery to go so slow. At that rate, we'd have to go 12 hours to get out of it. So we found a little cove and ran for cover. We hoped the wind would ease up on us (the forecast said it would slow to 10 mph), but it didn't. So after a few hours hunkered down, I studied the chart and studied the river out in front of me and figured that if we stuck close to the near shore, maybe we would be sheltered from the real beat-the-crap-out-of-you waves. And we could use the depth finder to keep us from running aground (because that would have been bad). So we pulled up anchor and tried again. My plan worked! We still had cold wind (and now rain) in our face, but we weren't getting tossed around as much. So we made our way down the river. Just a few miles before our stopping place, the wind did slow to that promised 10 mph. And the sun peeked out. It was awesome! We were exhausted, to say the least.

Then we stayed the night at Joe Wheeler State Park marina. Hot showers! And electricity to run our space heater. Temps got into the 20s last night, so the heater was totally necessary.
Saturday: This morning, we got up pretty early, even though it was going to be a pretty short day (yesterday was supposed to be short, too, and look what happened). Had to use the starting fluid to get the motor going again. Don't know what the deal is with that, but I disapprove. We'll get to the bottom of it soon, but not tonight. So we went through the Wheeler Lock into Wilson lake with no issues. When we got out of the lock, the wind was in our faces again. But it was 10 mph, so not too bad. A little chilly, but sunshine makes it so much more tolerable. We were really hoping to get some sailing in, since Wilson lake is so wide and awesome, but it didn't look like that was in the cards. But the we rounded a bend, and the wind was in our favor (close enough, anyway)! So up went the sails! Yay! It was awesome! We tooled around on the lake for a couple of hours, and then got kinda hungry. So we took the sails down and headed for the lock. We ended up in the lock with 3 other boats. It was weird. And that lock is deep! I don't know how many feet we went down, but we ended up in the shade from it. And then we went down the river and tied up here at Florence. The marina folks are super nice.
And now you finally have an update. It's pretty long, I'm sure. But I did give you the short version. I could have gone on and on about the misery of those couple of days on Wheeler lake. But nobody wants to read about that. Supposed to get cold again tonight, but we already have the heater cranked. We're meeting up with my parents tomorrow, so we should be able to blog more often. Yay! That means more pictures! Aw heck, I'll just throw in some more picture for the fun of it.
Our farewell party at the dock:

Pretty scenery on Nickajack Lake.
Locking through:

To Quote Trevor's Dad: "What a Day!"

If you've read "The Hobbit", you've heard the expression "out of the frying pan, into the fire". Yes, that expression is found all over the place, but I wanted to put a Hobbit quote in my blog. I'm allowed.
I have a new take on it. Avoid hurricane season, and tornadoes will get you! One of the reasons for our nearing-on-ridiculously-cold-weather departure is to avoid hurricane season in the Gulf and Florida. Hurricane season officially ends November 30, which is right around when we'll be arriving in Mobile. Of course, hurricanes will do whatever they darn well please. If they want to form and bash up the coast in December, we can't do a thing to stop them, no matter what our calendars say. They're hurricanes, for Pete's sake! Right. Tangent. Where was I? We've avoiding hurricanes. Because they have a bad attitude and want to smash my boat (didn't know that about hurricanes, did you?). You know what we didn't count on? Tornadoes! They also have a bad attitude, but luckily didn't want to smash my boat. This time.
I know tornadoes in Tennessee are not a rare occurrence. In the Chattanooga area, however, they're slightly less common. In this glorious city, we're in a big bowl. The mountains around us buffer any storm systems that move through, takes the energy right out of them. Which has made for an overall disappointing showing of storms for the nine years I've lived here. Until yesterday.
I was sitting in the cockpit of the boat, watching the big storm roll in. I had just gotten off the phone with Trevor, who told me the storm was breaking in North Chatt. I could see the storm cell he was talking about. Very big and dark. And moving right toward me in a most spectacular show of height, wind, and lightning. I was going to stay in the cockpit until it started raining (because that's what I do, I love storms). Then I heard a freight train sound. Sorry, the freight train sound. But I thought "Nah, it couldn't be." Five seconds later, I saw swirling action. A few expletives (just one, really, repeated 3 times) burst from my mouth, and I flew into the boat, put the hatch boards in, and hunkered down. After 10 seconds of hunkering (the boat was rocking pretty wildly by now), I couldn't stand it any more. I had to see what was going on! So I peeked out of the window just in time to see the transformer by the bath house explode in a grand show of fireworks. "Wow!" Ten seconds later, it was over. There was some wind, and then there was just rain.
Naturally, I tweeted about it immediately, then poked my head outside to talk to the neighbors.
Everyone here was okay. Our boats came out unscathed. There was some damage to biminis and stuff like that. But most of the damage was done to trees. Poor, poor trees. I tried to drive out (had a Rock Band and pizza date), but was hopelessly trapped. To the immediate right was a huge tree down. To the left was a bigger tree down. Bugger. So I took the car back and went walking. You can see the exact path the tornado took when it came through. How it skipped right over the bath house, but decimated the huge trees past the dumpsters. Mighty big mess all around, and we were stranded in the middle of it. With no electricity. Fortunately, we're set up for no electricity, so I wasn't too phased by it. Just sat here and played some Solitaire. Until I saw the green lights of the next boat coming in.
Yep, my neighbor went out in this mess. His son, actually. He and two friends were getting the boat ready to go out a couple of hours earlier. They heard there was supposed to be a storm in a couple of hours, and maybe they could catch some wind. "I think you'll get more than you're bargaining for." But they were already putting in the reef points, so they'd be fine. That's what they told me. 20-year-old boys are silly, but mostly immortal. So they came back in after the storm, and I poked my head out. "I'm so glad to see you guys!" And I was. I was worried about them.
Them: "We saw 3 tornadoes! Did you see them?"
Me: "Yeah, we had one come through here."
Them: "We had one chasing us!"
They had one chasing them. Dude. Those tornadoes can be mean.
So we were all spared, luckily. There's a lot more to say, but I'm tired of repeating myself (I've told my story a few times today). This is the part where I spout out some poetic wisdom about life and how you never know what's going to happen. But it's almost midnight, and I've had a busy day.
Oh by the way, we're moved out of Trevor's apartment and onto the boat. That happened, too. Also, Trevor's dad had heart surgery. Pace maker. He's okay, too.
Busy couple of days, for sure.

The Sandwich Incident

Captain's Log:
We're in the process of moving out of Trevor's apartment and onto the boat. I've already taken lots of clothes, dishes, food, and towels (omg, so many towels, but we probably still won't have enough) to the boat and have managed to find places for them. Go me! My years of Tetris are really paying off. Who says video games rot your brain? I managed to get all of our books (all of them!) into the two square ottomans (you know the ones from Wal-Mart and Target that are so awesome). Tetris at work, my friends.
So we're in the middle of moving out. We knew it would be an awkward time of transition, but so far it's gone pretty well. Until this morning. Last night we packed up most of the kitchen, some going to Trevor's parents' basement, some going to the boat, some going to my parents' basement.
Well, I decided this morning that instead of my usual bowl of cereal, I'd use our last tomato and have a sandwich. We also had a little bit of mozzarella left. I even broke out the jar of pesto: a caprese sandwich! I was psyched; this was going to be an awesome sandwich! Sadly, the mozzarella had gone all spotty. No caprese sandwich! Naturally, I started cursing that horrible refrigerator. Seriously, it's awful. I don't know how much food we've lost to it's inconsistent cooling (and dripping water, let's not forget that). I've blamed a lot of it on Aldi's cheap meats, but now I think that was unfair. It's the refrigerator. I won't miss it at all. Sometimes it's better to do without something completely (refrigeration) than put up with subpar quality. It's like Comcast internet. When the reliability of something is spotty, you'd rather just go without and have no expectations than always be disappointed in what you think you can count on. Bam! Slamming Comcast and this craptastic refrigerator all at once! Take that, disappointing things in my life!
Captain's rant: it was bound to happen eventually. This is a blog after all.
Back to the sandwich, which was already a disappointment due to lack of mozzarella. So I put away the pesto, because it would just make me think of what I couldn't have. Straight tomato and mayo sandwich: still always a good choice. I reach for the cutting board to slice up my tomato: no cutting board. It's packed away in a box in the trunk of my car. Ah well, I'll use a plastic plate, no problem. I go to the silverware drawer to get a knife. Empty! We packed up Trevor's silverware to go home and the knives are divided between boat stuff (in the car) and going home (some mystery box somewhere). Fortunately, I had my knives. Butter knives. But they're serrated, and a serrated knife can cut surprisingly well. (I've actually managed to cut my finger on a serrated plastic knife before; true talent I have.) So I hack this poor tomato into thick slices with my butter knife. Totally works! If it had been a yummy, ripe tomato, I think it would have turned into mush. But this was a crappy, tasteless, very firm, store-bought tomato, so it sliced beautifully. And I finally made my sandwich. A rather tasteless (Aldi tomatoes = not good at all) sandwich, but still a victory. I overcame all this adversity in my way and emerged (relatively) victorious.
Long blog about a sandwich, right?
Stay tuned for the next episode in The Adventures of Cap'n Rumslinger!

Less than Three Weeks to Departure

Captain's Log:
(Decided we need to identify which of us is updating the blog. Trevor said he would contribute, as I've really been slacking off with the updates lately. So he might pop in with an update sometimes.)
Just a month since the last update, so I'm getting better. Sort of. There just haven't been a lot of exciting developments lately. But here goes anyway.
Bottom step is now secure! It no longer slides out from under you when you step on it. Tricksey little thing, I showed it! Now it's a bit ugly, but definitely solid. Most of my carpentry work on the boat is ugly but solid. It's my specialty.
Speaking of carpentry work. I finished the shelf in the kitchen. It's sectioned off and has dowels on the front of each section to hold things in when the boat leans. A picture would show what I'm talking about, but I haven't bothered to take a picture yet. Also, it's not very pretty. And I've got the toilet secured in case of rough seas. Very important that the toilet not flip over! That would make for a bad day. What else? I've done tons of mediocre carpentry work over the last few weeks: mounted CD player and VHF radio, built a box for one of the stereo speakers (so we can take it outside), added a shelf in the galley cabinet, put up a door for the bathroom, fit a piece of wood into a hole in the galley counter (it had curved corners - extra degree of difficulty), and I made seat backs for the settee seats in the cabin. Lots of little things that took a lot of time, but don't look great and are not interesting to read about.
Oh, and we got the main sail repaired. Looks pretty good. Haven't taken it out sailing yet (we've been too busy working on the boat and visiting with people before we leave), but I think it'll hold up nicely. As long as we don't use it in really strong winds. I replaced the main sheet and made an eye splice in it (I'll get good at those one day).
Tried out the new hammock last week. It's awesome!
This week I have to finish all my little work projects. Then next week will be moving things onto the boat and finding creative ways of putting them away. There's a lot of storage space on the boat, but most of it isn't very convenient. I think it's going to take weeks (if not months) to get everything where we really like it. Trevor and I are both Tetris masters, so we'll be able to fit a ton of stuff into that tiny space. It's just a matter of getting it out again.
I think that's about all for now. We'll be heading out November 1, and I'll learn to put pictures on here before then. Almost adventure time!

Boat Work Update

It's been a while since I updated you on the boat progress. Wow, almost 2 months. We've definitely gotten things done since then.

We have done some cleaning, then a little more cleaning, followed up by more cleaning still. I lived on the boat for two years, so I managed to clutter up the place with a ton of stuff. Really, most of it was just junk. With Trevor's amazing help and support (and the occasional look of "do you really need this?"), we managed to get everything off that I'd dragged on board. I wonder how I ever managed to fit so much on there! Then I remember how little room I had, and it makes sense. So the boat is clean! Huge accomplishment!

Also, we have new settee cushions. The settees are the couch-like seats that run along the sides in the cabin, for you non-boaty folks. The old cushions were the originals, and they did not look or feel good after 30+ years on the boat. So we had new ones made (Mattress Affair in Hixson = very nice people and excellent custom work). And my awesomely amazing mom was kind enough to make covers for them! They look fantastic. One of these days I'll figure out how to do pictures on the blog, and you'll actually get to see the boat.

I've done lots of work in my time off (currently unemployed), but I can't even think of what most of it has been. I installed new cabin lights inside. The old ones were quite ugly. The new ones are really plain, but it beats the heck out of ugly! And they're supposed to be a little more energy efficient, so good news for the batteries. New CD player is installed. Note: I don't recommend Dual brand; the wiring is off-kilter with them. We had to do some unnatural wiring just to get the darn thing to work, and then it drained the batteries. So a couple of days ago, I installed a switch to the radio so we could turn it completely off an not kill our only power source.

And for today's awesome accomplishment, we installed a bimini top! I managed to find one online for less than $200 with free shipping. Bargain shopping is one of my strong points. It's definitely a 2-person job to get that thing put on. I managed to put it together on my own the other day, but Trevor had to come to the rescue for the actual installation. So now we have shade in the cockpit! Pretty excited about that one. It's another job I've been meaning to do since I bought the boat almost 4 years ago (like new interior lights).

So basically, we've gotten numerous things done. Some are cool to look at, none of them are interesting to read about. Once we're under way, maybe the blogs will be more interesting.

Things in progress:
Main sail is in the shop being repaired. We probably need a new one, but it's $1200 versus $100 for repairs. We'll just see how it holds up.
V-berth mattress is ordered. Memory foam! Should be here in the next week or two.
Still need to finish up some wiring. Seems like there's always something else to wire. I'm getting good at it.
Fixing the bottom step inside. It's really unstable. We haven't broken anything yet, but we're bound to if we don't shore that thing up.
Bathroom door. The old one literally fell to pieces. 30 years is the limit on whatever glue held it together. I had a shoddy curtain hanging, but Trevor wants real privacy. What a diva. ;oP
Lots of (hopefully) little things to be done. And getting things back on the boat in an organized way will be the biggest task. Good thing the First Mate is so good at organizing. Captain? Not so much.

I'll update before 2 months next time. Captain's word.

The Boat is Back!

Finally all the work at Sale Creek was done, so we went to pick it up yesterday. Shifty was nice enough to give us a ride up to Sale Creek. (Our Hero!) We got to the marina early, paid our bill, picked up a little fuel, and headed out. We hit the river around 10:30. The forecast called for 60% chance of rain and thunderstorms. And it was pretty cloudy most of the trip. Nice and cool, though.
Overall, it was a pretty uneventful trip, so there isn't much to blog about. The sun came out about 45 minutes before we got back to the marina. It was so hot! And we both ended up a little sunburned. That spray sunscreen is really nice and easy to use, but it's easy to miss spots. So I had a very splotchy sunburn. Trevor had the usual burn on the back of his neck and shoulders.
About 30 minutes before we got back to the marina, our tiller cracked. We were switching off driving, and I leaned on it a little. I didn't even lean hard (no chubby jokes here), so it must have been weakening for a while. Luckily, it was still drivable. I wrapped a rope around the end where it connects, just to make sure it didn't crack all the way and fall off. So we made it back.
Parking the boat took a couple of tries. I think the motor is working a lot better than it was, thanks to all the recent usage (a happy diesel is one that's run a lot), so it was more responsive than I'm used to. Didn't hit any boats, though! (Luckily, I'm pretty responsive, too.) But I got it lined up perfectly on the second try and parked it like a champ. We had grand ideas of putting the boom back on and everything, but we were (read, I was) tired and ready to get back in air conditioning.
So now the boat is back and ready to be made livable. Yay! The oil leak is stopped for now, so things are looking cautiously optimistic for an early November departure. *fingers crossed*