#8 Getting home

Pensacola FL (actually just a couple of miles west of there, at Elberta, AL) to Knoxville TN, by river.

July 2024. 890 miles. 20 locks. By boat. Seven days! That is hauling a**, no matter how you look at it. I knew I wanted to try owning a fast boat this time, but wow. That’s an average of 127 miles a day. MoonShine moves. When I did this trip in the sailboat it took three weeks. We actually were gone 12 days, but 5 of those were non-moving days; either we were prepping the boat, waiting to get the props cleaned, or taking a day off to sit in a marina with the A/C on. Was it the same experience at speed as it was in a sailboat? Pretty much, yes. That heady feeling of watching the wake recede behind you, (a metaphor for life; the wake, like life, is powerful and meaningful when up close but as it moves away into our past, that meaning fades into the mists of forgetfulness, just as the boat’s wake melts back into the water) never loses its fascination. In the other direction, again, the heady feeling of looking just over the horizon or around the next bend in the river is endlessly exhilarating. And just like life, you can anticipate all you want but you just never know what the next few miles will bring.

We passed a number of trawlers or sailboats moving at 8 knots while we were doing 19 knots, and I marveled that I had once traveled so far so slowly. Either one has its time and place, but for now, I’m kinda liking the speed thing.

This was our goal, our slip in Tennessee:

As is always true with boat trips, we had our share of glitches. First one was when we got to the boat and the A/C was not working. There are two on board, one front, one rear, and the rear one kept giving us an error message and shutting off. You’d let it cool down and it’d run again a bit, but not enough to cool the boat. It was in the high 90’s, in the sun, once the temp inside the boat hit 104. The problem was not with the A/C as such, it was the high water temp. At the marina where we were, we saw 96 and 97 water temps every day. The A/C uses seawater to cool the freon, and with water temps that high, it just can’t do it. We cooked. We wouldn’t have been down there at all except remember that lock at Demopolis that was broken for a few months? We’d have brought the boat home in the cool of spring otherwise, but that lock repair delayed us months. I made a mistake not realizing how hot Florida is in July, and didn’t even think that the A/C might not work. But we were there, and we wanted to get moving and get into cooler water. So we left with a boatload of food, full fuel tanks, and high hopes.

We made it six miles. When we got out of the intracoastal waterway and into Mobile Bay, which is far bigger than you might imagine, (you can barely see the shore from the middle, which is crazy) I hit the gas to get up on plane. Nothing but smoke. The engines were trying, but something was choking them back. My first thought was the air filters, which I had re-oiled. Maybe I used too much oil? So I shut down and pulled them. Tried again. Nope. The only thing left was the propellers. Rope again? We had no vibration so probably not ropes around the props again, like we had in Clearwater. So once again, on with the scuba mask, into the water and under the boat. The moment I touched a prop I knew what it was. The boat had sat so long in the marina, two and half months, the props were covered with growth. Barnacles. So we limped back and called several places to see about getting pulled and cleaned up. There was a big fishing tournament going on that week and the soonest they could get us in was in two days. Ugh. So we spent the time tied to the docks at Saunders Yacht Works, using the employee break room and marveling at the huge boats there. Then the boat lift had a flat, which took them a day to fix. Ugh. We did get “Knoxville TN” on the back of the boat. Here’s a few pictures from that ordeal. As you can see, some of the boats were massive!

Once we got underway, I noticed the boat wasn’t as fast as before. The props were scraped clean and powerwashed, but they weren’t polished like they used to be. So our top end was only 19.5 MPH. But at least we were moving! We cut across Mobile Bay using some waypoints we’d gotten from another boater. Over and over again on the trip we got invaluable help and tips from people we never met, some of them were on boat forums and some were on the AGLCA site. Mobile Bay, however, is just not much to look at. Refineries all along the west coast, and Mobile itself presents the industrial side to the river, so it’s not much to look at either. We blasted across it, some 30 miles, and fueled up at a marina just on the south edge of town. Marinas are an entire chapter and I might as well get that off my chest.

We stayed at a number of marinas, and surprisingly, only a few of them were well-run, organized, or professional. A couple came close and were very nice so I don’t want to knock them all, but man. I was surprised to find such shoddy places along the way. I think the problem is of course the hurricanes, no one is going to spend tens of millions to rebuild when a marina makes no money compared to razing it and building waterfront condos, and the rest of the problem for existing ones may be that the cost of maintenance is just too high. But even so. One had a sunken boat right in the main entrance that had obviously been there years, all of them had run-down docks and buildings, one told us to tie up at the end of K dock. So we get there to discover that the docks are only marked on the land side. Seriously? How long has this woman worked there and she’s still telling boats to tie up on docks that they can’t identify? Some of them told us it was easy to get in, just follow the channel markers. Except the channel markers haven’t been there since the Nixon administration. They all bragged about having wifi, which they technically did, but you had to be standing next to the marina office to get a signal. Out at the boat, forget it. The restrooms/showers at some of them were ok, but about half were pretty skanky so we used the boat. Some had laundry, some did not. Some of them had so many spiderwebs on the electrical box you had to tear it away to use it. The billion dollar marina we were at in Florida was spotless, beautiful, and new, but they didn’t have laundry, and there were no ramps down to the boats for dock carts. Just stairs. Someone designed a billion dollar marina and forgot people might use it? But they all made sure to get your credit card number first thing. As you can tell, I was not impressed with most of them. This was mostly on the river system and the gulf coast of Florida, who knows, maybe they’re better on the east coast.

As we progressed the props got polished up a bit and our speed slowly increased, but even now it’s not right so I’ll polish them until they gleam the next time I pull the boat.

As we went up the river we went through locks. And locks. And locks. Twenty altogether. They all got us through pretty quickly, it was just HOT sitting inside one waiting for it to fill. Poor Cheryl took the brunt of that, it was hot and windless at the back of the boat, and the idling engines stunk of diesel exhaust.

But she handled it with a smile!

We stopped at Bobbys Fish Camp for fuel, easily the most “rustic” marina along the way. We had to call LoraJane to get her to come down and unlock the fuel pump. I’m not sure what we’d have done if she had been on vacation or something as we were out. She was the lady who long ago told me the great story about the Steamboat, the Suicide, the Ghost, the Explosion and the Princess. That story is here: https://www.cruisingmoonshine.com/bobbys-fish-camp-the-steamboat-the-suicide-the-ghost-the-explosion-and-the-princess/

The place isn’t the same, though, the restaurant is long closed and the ravages of time are clearly showing.

We had a gal polish the boat before we left, she did a great job. She polishes boats in the summer and does professional Christmas decorating in the winter for corporations. Interesting way to make a living!

However, it wasn’t all roses. We anchored out on the river a few times but twice we woke up to BUGS! Once it was fishflies, or mayflies, the second time it was little white moths. The anchor light attracted them. This photo is before I even took a broom to it.

Yuck! Cheryl wouldn’t even leave the inside of the boat until I swept them all up. Can’t say I blame her!

This is how we did our navigation. We have all the chart books and we used that little blue sticker to mark the position of the boat and we’d move it along as we went. Then we’d look ahead in the book and find the next fuel stop or anchorage.

We saw a lot of interesting things along the way, like this sternwheeler/museum. At one point, for about 50 years, steamboats ruled the inland rivers from the Gulf of Mexico to the provinces of Canada. There was a short while when you could take a steamship from Knoxville to Asheville, right through the mountains. Then the railroads came along and the paddlewheeler era died, another technology replaced by the next one.

And this guy, an abandoned 75 footer. Apparently the owner died and it’s been sitting there for nine years. Someone is paying slip fees and a mechanic to keep it from sinking, but what a waste. I have long been fascinated with all the dead and abandoned boats in marinas. It sure seems like boats are possibly the most common derelict around. You see a lot of dead RV’s too, but something about abandoned boats just gets me. One day they were brand new and someone’s dream. What happened? I’d love to have some way to collect all those stories.

And tows! This guy was pushing three wide and three long. Wood chips. I asked him what they weighed. Eleven thousand tons. Per barge. Ninety-nine thousand tons! This is why you do not get in front of these guys.

And of course locks. This one was particularly leaky. A bit unnerving, looking up at those doors knowing they’re holding back an entire lake.

Another lock, and a home-made machine for scooping up the palmlilys that cover the waterways in Alabama. If you didn’t keep up with them they would soon choke off the smaller routes in to marinas.

A railroad bridge, one of two we had to call on the radio and ask them to raise. They did, although we had to wait for the train to go across.

Finally we’re getting close to home! Some familiar sights we went past as we continued north.

I experimented with a few different navigation programs, still not sure which one I like the best. One keeps track of your position so that at the end of the trip you have a record of it.

One thing I noticed was that when we turned off the TennTom Waterway and onto the Tennessee river, wow what a difference! The TennTom and the TomBigBee are narrow rivers with few places to pull over, not much scenery except trees, and really, just a water highway. But the Tennessee! It’s five miles wide in places, with anchorages everywhere and gorgeous scenery. Foothills in the distance, the Chattanooga gorge, clouds hanging on the mountain tops, and finally the Smokies come into view. It is an entirely different experience. The East-West Tennessee is beautiful, the North-South section of rivers, not so much. Those rivers feel more like just a way to get to Florida now.

Another observation I had along the way was that, yes, I like this going fast business, and it’ll be great for doing the Great Loop. That’s mostly inland with flat water. But for going to the Bahamas or across choppy water, a sailboat is the way to go. You just can’t go 20 MPH over rough water. The ride would be too rough. Maybe in a big 60 foot sportfish, but that holds no interest for me. I remember sailing in five foot seas on Lucidity, sails full and pulling hard, and she plowed right through and over those waves, throwing a white necklace of sparkling water twenty feet into the air, powering like a locomotive, unstoppable. The sense of power was overwhelming. I like loud cars and this fast speedboat, all for the power, but to feel that kind of power using only the wind is undeniably a special thing. To travel in the sea, in the waves, you gotta have a sailboat. As I said earlier, there is a time and a place for both kinds of boats. Right now it’s speedboat time.

And then, finally! The grand conclusion of the trip! Our home port, Louisville Landing Marina, Knoxville TN. Just a few miles from my house and from Cheryl’s. So now to clean up the boat, tinker with it a bit to make it ready to take out again, do a few things to make it feel more like home, then enjoy fall cruising up and down the Tennessee river. Come on down to the waterfront and see us!

“It’s more than a ship. It’s a home. A world. A breathing thing, nothing holding it back. The wind takes it and carries it for ten thousand miles. Every one of those miles you’re free. Like being a bird, part of the sky or the sea. You have a whole empire of freedom- sea freedom- you’re alive the same way the ship’s alive. You run before the wind – you never want to stop.” John Wayne “Wake of the Red Witch.”