Taken on the Tennessee River by a fellow Looper. Don't worry....we have autopilot!
We are now in the tiny corner of the world where Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama meet on Pickwick Lake. We have been here for a week due to the always present ‘more repairs’ list. This time our props and drive shaft needed to be re-aligned….again. The culprits were logs floating just below the water surface that we had ‘found’ along the way on the rivers. We also needed both air conditioners worked on. We found that the forward A/C under our bed had a blocked drain and was now a bucket of rust from sitting in a pan of water for 12 years. UGGGGHHHHH! Why was this not found at our original survey???? So we’ll bleed some more money out for a new A/C. But it gets WORSE. While working on removing the rusted AC, we noticed a wet spot on the inside of our boat weeping some water through the hull at the bow below the water line!!! A small area inside hull in this area was actually soggy when the repairman felt it! So now we are THANKFUL for the A/C issue because we would never have known about the issue until the hull would have eventually crumbled and we would have sunk. So now we wait another 3-4 days for the hull repair, which of course, they believe is due to a bow thruster installation years earlier that our surveyor didn’t catch as well. Can you feel the love I have for the survey process. Ha!
I got a funny story about coming into Pickwick Lake last week. We got in the area a day early and decided to anchor out for a night before coming into the marina on our reserved date. We found a great cove that is popular with the local boaters, so there were about 6 boats there overnight. At 10:30 pm, three boats rafted together about 300 feet from us kept turning up their music (they had awesome speakers, btw) louder and louder to the point of being ridiculous. I couldn’t even hear Derek snoring right beside me in bed! Now I love to party and loud music doesn’t bother me…until they start playing songs from the 80’s. When ‘She’s Got Betty Davis Eyes’ starts blaring, it’s time for the madness to stop. So I pour a glass of wine, find the 1300-lumen spot light, have a seat on the back deck, and shine that puppy right on the offending boats. It was like instant daylight and I could see them start running around the boats like ants. After about 3 minutes of burning out their retinas, the music went off….and so did my light. The next morning, while the other boaters were still sleeping, we left for the marina and got settled into our slip. A few hours later….guess who comes into the slips right next to us. Yep. Nothing was said, but there were also no more music issues!
Since we were stuck in Iuka, MS for repairs, we decided to rent a car to do some shopping and see the sites. Tim and Patti from the boat CRAIC are also docked here with us, so the 4 of us set out together. We were in the turning lane, waiting to turn left against traffic, when a guy in a huge pickup waved us to go in front of him. We had just started the turn through and a car going about 45mph in the other lane plowed into us. The rental car is totaled, but thanks to seat belts and air bags, the 4 of us are unscathed. God is good. The lady who hit us may have a broken arm from her air bag deployment. Even though Derek got cited for failure to yield, we learned that the woman driver was on pain medication while driving. Life is like a box of chocolates.
Today we are in a cabin that we rented while the fiberglass repair is being done on the boat for the leak. I have to admit that we are enjoying all the ROOM….and the bathtub….and the big screen TV…..and the full kitchen…and the toilet that we can flush all we want! Even Gypsea is running around and sliding on the floors enjoying her new huge playground. The boat will seem a lot smaller to us when we go back aboard tomorrow.
On a very sad note, I just found out via Facebook this morning that our good friend Lou, who we met at Doziers Regatta Marina, passed away this past weekend. We had posted pictures of him and Kim on the blog when we were in Deltaville, VA for a month last June. We became very close to them both and enjoyed many evenings together. We were making plans to meet them again in the Bahamas in February. I don’t know the details of his death, but he was our age, full of life and laughter, and we feel privileged to have been able to know him for a short while. His favorite song was ‘I Can See Clearly Now’. Yes you can, Lou….yes you can.