Monday Oct. 27, 2014

Departing Chattanooga

We got up early 6:30 for our departure from Chattanooga only to find the river engulfed with fog. Colletta was agreeable so back to bed she went. The fog finally burned off enough so we departed at 11:15. Running with the current now as we head down river our speed has picked up to 8.6 kts at 1500 rpm. Sweet !

Chattanooga has been a great stop. For only .75 cents a foot you get to stay right in downtown ( $ 32.25 per night for us).

The current slowed alittle as we got further down river, 7.5 kts at 1500 rpm that 9 miles per hour much better then 5.5 – 6 kts against the current. Beautiful day with temperatures of 72 degrees and plenty of sun.

We had to go thru one lock today, Nickajack Lock at mm 424.7 about a 39 mile run from Chattanooga but when you a flying along time goes quick. We locked thru with two other much larger pleasure craft that were returning from Knoxville and the Alabama- Tennessee football game on Saturday. As an aside, we had toyed with the idea of going farther up the river from Chattanooga to maybe Knoxville. We decided we had had enough going against the current and decided Chattanooga was as far up stream as we would go. About 30 minutes after leaving this morning we heard a boater asking the Chickamauga Lock ( that is the lock immediately upstream from Chattanooga for lockage to go up stream. The lockmaster informed him that a structural problem had been discovered in one of the locks doors and they won’t be able to lock him thru until the engineers could assess the damage. This occurred Monday noon Oct. 27 when the lock was closed and as I type this installment of the blog the lock is still closed until further notice. So if we had gotten thru this lock we might be trapped up stream for who knows how long. It is better to be unlucky then good some times.

We decided to make a short day of it with our late start so some other Loopers we had met, Berwick and Alexis on M/V Moondance called and said they were anchored a little ways after the lock behind Burns Island, so we cruised on down and pulled in behind them. The water was 19 feet deep and whatever kind of bottom was down there was hard. We could hear and feel the anchor pouncing along the bottom as I back up trying to get it to set. We let our more and more anchor chain until at around 100 feet it suddenly caught. I backed down some more to make sure it was set and would hold. My thought of being close enough to Moondance went out the window because we ended up so far away.

Our anchorage behind Burns Island

Moondance thru a telephoto lens

 We had a peaceful evening and Skyped with Pete for 45 minutes. It was incredible cell coverage for the boonies as we could hear cows mooing behind the trees. It wasn’t until Tuesday morning when we left the anchorage we spotted this huge cell tower right around the corner from the anchorage.