Wednesday, May 24, 2017

We pulled anchor this morning and were headed upstream again by about 6:30, after a peaceful night in our at anchor.

We played leapfrog all day with a couple of towboats and 2 sailboats, all of which were traveling about the same speed as we were. The 2 faster boats that we travelled with yesterday were able to break from the pack and get to the Beville lock ahead of the two towboats. We arrived about the same time as the tows, so we had to wait for them to lock upstream. So we sat, idled up and down and turned a few circles while we waited 2 1/2 hours for our turn. (Commercial vessels have priority).

The high point of the day was seeing the two adult bald eagles, who patiently posed for me to get good pictures before flying away.

As we got close to Columbus, there was a lot of river traffic and congestion. At one point, We were travelling between 2 sailboats, with a tow bringing up the rear. As we approached 3 stationary tows and several smaller boats on our right, another southbound tow radioed that he was about to meet us. The stationary vessels were laying a huge pipline, and were taking up half the channel. The southbound tow radioed that his barges were 110' wide. We ducked in between two of the pipeline tows, and let him pass. You can't win a right-of-way arguement with a boat that's pushing twelve thousand tons of cargo!

Here's a screenshot of our 58 mile route today:

   

We had originally planned on making it through the Columbus lock today, but after our delay at Beville lock, we decided to anchor South of the Columbus lock. My chart showed an anchorage at the North end of an oxbow that was close enough to town to walk from shore. After weaving through a tight passage at a barge loading dock, and passing under 3 bridges, we were rewarded with a great, calm anchorage at the edge of Columbus's Riverfront Park. There was even a modern, floating dinghy dock for us to use! 

Glenda says:

There are always interesting things to see along the river.  

Maybe i should get one of these for my grandkids.

After we finally got through the lock we past the last working snag boat on the tenn-tom.  I think it retired sometime in the 80s.

We pulled into our anchorage about 5:30.  We had both already cleaned up so we got into the dinghy and rowed to a very nice river walk area in Columbus.  After a short walk we found Harveys and had a delicious dinner.  

We walked along the park after dinner.

This little critter was enjoying his dinner on the bank near our dinghy.  He did not appear to be disturbed by us.

The real fun came as we attempted to get gracefully from the dinghy back into the boat.  We were successful getting in, the graceful part we missed.  If anyone was videoing it will become a YouTube favorite.  

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Today was a great day to be on the water!

We pulled out of Kingfishers Marina in a light drizzle and cool (66 degree) weather about 6:30 this morning. The rain, which was never hard enough to cause us a problem, continued through the morning and the took turns with short periods of sunshine after lunch.

There wasn't a lot of wildlife to be seen, but at about 9:45, Glenda yelled "EAGLE!" and I grabbed  for the camera as the bald eagle flew across the river in front of us. I was able to get one picture just before he went behind the tree tops.

We saw only one other boat, a bass boat, on the water all morning, but the radio traffic let us know there were at least 3 other cruising boats coming upriver behind us. A couple of them had AIS transmitters, and I saw that they were travelling just slightly faster than we were. By around noon, when we passed 2 Southbound towboats with barges, the 4 of us were within about a mile of each other.

We stayed together to the Howell Heflin Lock and Dam, arriving there just after a towboat and barges locked down. The lockmaster was waiting on us with the gates open, and in short order all 4 of us were tied to the bollards and headed up 30 feet in altitude to the upper pool.

We had heard the lockmaster radio a sailboat that had grounded a couple of miles north of the dam, to check on their  welfare. As it turns out they  had been stuck there for almost 24 hours, in 5 feet of waterwith a boat that has a 5 1/2 foot draft. The other 3 boats leaving the lock radioed the grounded captain and offered to pass as close and as fast as they could, leaving as much wake as possible. This is normally a very rude thing to do, but if you are grounded, it sometimes rocks your boat enough that you can break free and power into deeper water. (I did not offer to help, as Genesis leaves only about a 6 inch wake at full speed.) After all three boats tried to rock him free, the captain reported a few inches of progress, so the first boat made a second pass, throwing about a 6 foot wake onto the stranded boat, raising it up and down while the captain put the engine in full reverse. A moment later he thanked everyone via the radio, reporting that he was ungrounded, and in 18' of water. There was no mistaking the joy in his voice!

While the other 3 captains decided to travel another 10 miles or so to anchor for the night, Glenda and I chose to stop at Warsaw Cutoff, at mile marker 275, at 3:30 this afternoon. We dropped anchor, and I tested flying the drone from the boat.

Glenda says:
Sooo thankful to be back on the water!  Between Tom working on the boat and doctors working on Tom I was not sure we would get to travel.  I told Tom early this morning " we're not talking about the future today, we are just going to enjoy the day" and we have. There was a nice cool breeze coming through the boat all day.  Now we are enjoying the quiet solitude of the water.  We took the dinghy out for a bit when we arrived.  We both needed a little exercise.   But with both of us in it it was hard to keep her straight.  It was just reassuring to know that I could get in and out of it from the boat.

Heading North!

Sunday, May 21, 2017

After waiting over 4 months to get our rudder's hydraulic cylinder repaired, we are finally ready to take Genesis out on another adventure.

Our last planned trip, in November, ended short when the hydraulic cylinder began pouring fluid around the seals, and I made the decision to return to Demopolis for repairs. As with most boat repairs, the seemingly simple repair ended up taking 4 times as long and cost 4 times as much as originally estimated. The cylinder is back in and working well, however, so I'll try not to whine about it.

Since we missed the opportunity to leave the boat in Orange Beach for the winter, we decided that we'd rather be on the Tennessee River for the summer months, so that is where we are headed.

We will leave Demopolis in a few days and head upstream on the Tenn-Tom Waterway toward it's beginning where it meets the Tennessee River at the point where Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee meet.

This leg of the trip will be about 250 miles and we will pass through 10 Locks before turning East onto the Tennessee. We hope to do this section of the trip in 6 days, but delays at the locks can make a joke out of a boating schedule, so we will see what happens. Another thing that can slow a Northbound boat down is rising current and river levels from heavy rains. I'm not sure how much effect the rain from this week will have.

Phone/Internet service will probably be spotty, but I should be able to upload a blog post no more than a day behind real-time.

We hope you enjoy taking the trip with us via the blog, and sharing the blessing of seeing God's creation up close as we travel.

Tom (and Glenda)

Friday, November 11, 2016

Sorry for the delay in posting this update.
We left the marina in Demopolis along with 5 other boats about 6:00am. By 6:30 we were in the lock, and after being joined by one more boat, the gates were closed and we decended down to Coffeeville Lake and headed South.

Genesis was the slowest boat in the pack, but we never got too far behind the other trawlers and the catamaran that we'd locked through with.

About an hour south of the dam, we spotted our first bald eagle, as he circled over the river ahead of us. After a couple of loops he landed in a tree on our port (left) side, and promply turned his back toward us! Just as the boat passed him he turned around and posed for a good picture.

Shortly after that, we noticed the steering didn't feel right, and discovered a leak in the rudder steering actuator. Not good. We added fluid, but a couple of hours later we had to face the fact that we might have to return to Demopolis and call the trip off short.



We continued on to mile 146, the sight of Pickens Landing, an anchorage where two other boats in our group were already anchored. As we approached we were called on the radio by the Captain of "Lifes Tra-Vails", who invited us to raft up alongside the other boats for the night. Both the other boats were crewed by couples who were doing the "Great Loop".

The rest of the evening was bitter-sweet, as we got to visit with 4 other boaters who started out as strangers and ended the night as friends. The bitter part was the decision that in the morning, we would head back to Demopolis while the other two boats would continue south.

On Friday morning we untied from our new friend's boats and headed north after waiting an hour or so for a thick fog to lift. I had pulled the dinghy up close to the boat and tied her off, and as soon as we started moving, it flipped and filled with water. Not good again. 15 minutes of bailing with a 5 gallon bucket got us moving again.

On the way back to Demopolis, the weather was great as we saw another eagle, several groups of wild hogs, deer, and osprey.

We arrived at the Demopolis lock just before dark, and had to wait for a northbound towboat to lock up and exit the lock. The lockmaster then emptied the chamber and we entered the lower lates for our ride up. It was dark-thirty when we left the lock and the 30 minute ride to the marina was not fun in the dark. We did make safely back into our slip though.

After making some repairs, we hope to set out again for Gulf Shores - maybe in a couple of weeks.

Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016

This morning my brother Joe drove us to Demopolis and after a Walmart run we started the final prep to get the boat ready leave tomorrow.

We filled the water tanks, got ice, tied the dinghy to the back of the boat and did some temporary wiring of a new radio that has a built-in AIS reciever.

The dinghy is an 11' "Spinthrift" model rowboat thay I bought from a man in Georgia. It's a little big to store on deck, so we will pull it behind Genesis. I had good intentions of repainting it and renaming it Exodus (it comes right after Genesis), but that's another project that will have to wait.

The AIS reciever on the new radio is a neat safety feature. All the big commercial boats and many cruising boats have AIS transmitters, which send digital data messages several times a minute. The data typically includes the vessel's name, direction, speed, etc, and can be revieved from several miles away. So instead of meeting a huge towboat pushing barges in the middle of a bend with no warning, my AIS receiver will alert me to his position, speed and direction  while he is still miles away.

I still didn't get the new radio wired correctly to communicate with my chartplotter, but that can wait for another day.

We met this afternoonwith several other boaters who are heading south in the morning. There should be 5 or 6 of us, and we'll all go through the Demopolis lock together, hopefully around 6:00 am. It was really great to get to meet the other boaters and get to know them. Everybody has a story, and it's amazing how frequently God blesses us by letting us cross paths with people who stregthen our faith.

We will try to post at the end of the day tomorrow - if we can get internet sevice.

November 8, 2016

At last, Glenda and I are about to leave on another boat trip!

Since we brought Genesis (she was Dusty Weather then) up from Ft. Pierce, FL in June of last year, we have been working on several projects such as hull repair (blisters), bottom paint, new propeller shaft and bearing, new through-hull fittings, air conditioning, converting lights to LEDs, re-flooring the cockpit, replacing the forward hatch, repairing rot, painting, wiring new fans, lights, etc.

During this work we sandwiched in several day trips with the kids, grandkids, and occasionally with friends or other family members. The day trips were fun, but there is something special about untying and going on a trip that is measured in days instead of hours. We have missed the "adventure" of river travel at 7 mph.

So........ on Thursday we will untie from slip B-6 at Kingfisher Bay Marina and head South - destination Orange Beach, AL.

I'll try to post to updates here every night that we have an internet connection.

Genesis spent last Fall and Winter "on the hard". She was not happy, but her bottom looked much better after some repair and fresh paint!

Genesis, on a day trip this Summer.