Miscellaneous

(Did I spell that big word correctly?)

We made our trip to Chattanooga by car, and Sue’s mother is doing pretty well.  We drove back to Southport NC to retrieve our personal car & rediscovered that it is a heck of a long way there and back.  Our car will live at John & Susan’s house until we return to Chattanooga in a couple weeks for our Thanksgiving family reunion.

Our trip across Tennessee was at the height of color of the autumn leaves.  Driving over the mountains just full of the browns, yellows, reds and greens of the leaves was breathtaking.  I guess this is one good thing about being delayed in our boat travels.

A week or so ago, the remnants of a hurricane which came through Mexico, passed through here and went north.  The winds kicked up on the Great Lakes so I decided to see what’s happening on Lake Michigan.  With gale-force winds of 45 kts, the waves were 14-16 feet, with occasional 20 foot!  Can you think of any other reason NOT to be in Lake Michigan?!?

We came back to the boat a couple days ago to find a familiar boat on the next dock.  Kenny and Kathy aboard M/V “No Zip Code” had just returned from cruising to Chattanooga & were getting ready to head south down the Tenn-Tom.  We had last seen them in May of this year, when we docked next to them at both Cape May NJ and then again in Staten Island NY.  That’s a common event for all the Loopers during the year, meeting again and again somewhere farther down the road (or waterway).

We finally found a slip in New Orleans to stay for the winter, and it was the last one available in the marina.  Another marina we had tried to get into had no space available.  For some reason, there are a lot more boats around there, compared to 3 years ago when we were last there.  We’ll be staying on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain at South Shore Harbor Marina, a marina where we had stayed in early 2012.

So now we’re waiting for the cold front to come through tonight, and for the thunderstorms to cease, before we cast off our lines to head south.  We’ll need to watch river levels carefully, since the Tenn-Tom can get into flood very easily (we were caught in flood waters the first time we came up the Tenn-Tom).  Even if water levels don’t rise much, the dams will be spilling lots of water, which can lead to shoaling and shallow water in common anchorages.  I guess that if this were easy, most anyone could do it!  But travelling this waterway requires a crusty old sea dog with nerves of steel and salt water in his veins.  As soon as I find someone like this, I’ll let him drive my boat!