We began preparations to leave Green Turtle bay in the evening, filling up our water tanks and tidying up around the boat. In the morning, we were up early as usual, had breakfast, then went into wait mode. Rich and Melanie had decided to go home to deal with a family issue, and while they were making arrangements to store their boat Jewel, we decided to wait at the marina with them. The marina staff were very helpful, and made arrangements for them to store their boat at a sister marina that had much lower rates. With this done, we untied our lines and went over to the fuel dock to get pumped out and filled up with fuel. We then left the harbour with Jewel, to accompany them part of the way to the other marina. After about 45 minutes or so, we parted ways. We will really miss Rich and Melanie, and we hope to see them again on the loop.
The Monday predictions for tropical disturbance nine (which eventually became hurricane Helene). We are right on the Kentucky-Tennesee border, near the track for Saturday.
Ever since Monday when tropical disturbance 9 formed, we had been watching the National Hurricane Centre and evolving our plans for the next leg of travel. It was now Wednesday, and the storm was forecast to begin influencing our area sometime Thursday evening. Accordingly, we wanted to be secure in a marina by noon Thursday so we would not get nailed. Rich and I had scouted out marinas and anchorages a few days before, and we decided we would hunker down at Paris Landing State Park. This was a long day's journey away, so we decided to break up the trip with a night at an anchorage about half-way along the way. Even with the late start, we got to the anchorage just after noon and got set in. Although the winds were forecast to be light that evening, they would be changing direction late at night and so we made sure to anchor in a location with lots of swing room.
We chose Vickers bay, which offered lots of space and also would give us protection from the north winds after the wind shift late at night. We pulled in and set the anchor, then each of us napped. Later in the afternoon, another boat, Etcetera, came into the bay and anchored in one of the baylets.
As the sun went down we could hear thunder in the distance, and see lightning flashes pretty regularly. Although we got a bit of rain, we were just at the edge of that storm and had a pretty quiet night.
Louise made some carrot soup while we were running the generator. This soup-maker is basically a heated blender. It has various settings you can use to make different stuff. Basically, it heats what you are making, and occasionally the blender motor runs to mix and chop everything, while providing even heating to all of the soup.
We were up the next morning shortly after 5, and enjoyed our coffee while we watched the sun come up. The morning was fog free, with good visibility, and so we pulled up the anchor and set out as soon as it was bright enough to see well. The trip to Paris Landing was not very long, but the winds were going to come up, and we wanted to be well set-up before that happened.
As we travelled down Kentucky lake, the waves started to build. There was almost no wind, but the fetch was so long that it slowly pushed up the wave size. When we came into the marina, it was just short of whitecaps, indeed we saw a steady stream of whitecaps out on the lake after we tied up. The marina here was really well constructed with a large breakwater, so we had chosen a good place to hide. We added extra ropes to double up, and put out all our fenders. We were in slips with docks on both sides, so we set up some "spider-web" lines to keep us off the docks, similar to what we did at Petoskey in lake Michigan.
We are well-set for weather here. Each boat is in-between finger docks, so you can tie off on both sides of the boat. We are facing north-west, which is where the winds are forecast to be from. Later in the day, a couple of large boats arrived and tied on the other side of us, giving us some wind protection on both sides.
After checking in we went for a walk around the park, and checked out the lodge, golf course and restaurant. This place had a really nice hotel and golf course. The restaurant was nice, but upscale hotel-like and we didn't go back for food ($$$$).
This is the Chalet at the State park. They have several campgrounds here for tents or trailers, but also this facility and a golf course. The chalet has several large meeting rooms, and I suspect that a lot of their business is weddings and corporate retreats. The entire park is extremely well-cared for. The campgrounds are immaculate.
The marina was full of law enforcement when we got back from our walk. There were fire department boats, sheriff's boats, fish and game boats, and the coast guard. Even a helicopter landed in the parking lot. I tried to ask one of the sheriffs what was going on, but all I was told was that they had a rescue operation underway. Later, we found out they were searching for a kid who had jumped off one of the nearby highway bridges. Just before dark they found his body.
Police helicopter used in the search. They also had about 5 or 6 boats out searching; police, fire and coast guard. The search lasted all day, and the parking lot was full of various types of first-responders.
Right around sunset the wind started to pick up a little bit, and we got the first sprinkling of rain. The boat also started rocking. Although there is a large breakwater here, some waves sneak around the harbour entrance and create small swells in the harbour. We experienced this as well in several places in lake Michigan. With the long fetch in the lake, there were now steady whitecaps outside, so it looked like our next three days would be a bit rocky. Before it got dark, I checked all our lines, and made sure we were "hovering" in the slip between the docks. Our bow was pointed north-west, and the winds were expected to be either from the north or north-west, so we were well situated for the incoming rain and wind.
Louise found a freshwater bryozoan growing under the dock. These are invertebrate animals, which date back to the Ordovician period, and so represent a very ancient type of multicellular life form here on Earth.
The rain started just around the time it got dark, and it kept raining for the next 3 days. Although the wind picked up at first, it died down quickly, and we did not notice a lot of wind the first night. We know when it is windy because we are near the bow when we sleep, and you can hear our looper flag flapping on the flag pole.
The next day was a grey rainy day. It rained pretty steady all day long. The rain was not super-hard, but it never stopped and never diminished. It was not really very windy either, except for the occasional gust that would push the boat around. The harbour here is well-protected from all directions, especially the north (where the winds were coming from), so we we not exposed to the kind of steady wind or gusts that we had experienced in Petoskey Michigan.
It was not worth going out in the wet conditions, so we stayed inside all day watching TV. Every once in a while we took a break to do some small chores like cleaning, organizing, or paperwork. Kind of like being stuck at camp (cottage for non-Sudburians) during a really rainy day.
We bought some barbeque sauce in Paducah, and since then we put that sh** on everything.
The wind and rain picked up for a few hours around supper time. There were a few pretty good gusts, but once again, these did not approach what we experienced on lake Michigan. We were spider-webbed into the slip so the boat was pushed around a bit by the gusts, but the ropes absorbed everything as we "hovered" in between the docks. The winds completely died out later in the evening and it stopped raining sometime around midnight for a few hours.
The next day the wind had completely gone, although the rain continued all day. We spent the day, like the last, in the boat watching TV and sleeping, another rainy day at camp. We decided to order pizza for supper as the marina staff had told us about a place that would deliver here. The pizza was a nice tasty finish to a long grey day.
During the day, we decided to revise our plans for the next few weeks. We will be spending most of a month in the area, and originally planned to go to Chattanooga by boat, and then rent a car to go to Nashville. However, one of the locks we needed to go through to do that was damaged, and was log-jammed with barges, so we will not even TRY to get through, as we would experience big delays both ways - we would need to pass this lock twice if we stick to our current plan. Therefore, new plans were in order, and since we needed to slow down, our best option was to stay where we were in Kentucky lake for the next week or two. There are lots of anchorages and marinas here, so this gave us lots of options.
So, just as Helene died out, another disturbance was forming in the gulf. We kept a close eye on this region as part of our weather monitoring, and factored it in as part of day-to-day planning. You really become addicted to weather forecasts when you live on a boat, especially wind predictions. Now that we are south of the great lakes, we also are monitoring storms like Helene, rainfall, and also check the river water flows and levels every day. But, at least we don't have to worry about freezing - in fact we have to run the AC every day it is so hot here.
We had a non-refundable reservation at our next marina - Birdsong - so we planned to go there and then backtrack north for a while. Birdsong was an AGLCA sponsor, which is one reason we decided to stop there as part of our original plan. Since we usually try to reserve about a week out, we made reservations before we left Green Turtle. However, I do not think we would have gone there if our reservation was refundable. Why? Access. The water levels here are low, and we read several accounts of people grounding getting into the place. Looking at the chart, the entrance was long, narrow and twisty. In Green Turtle this detail got missed, but as we refined our plans, it started to become a concern.
On the navigation chart, you see lots of marks for old flooded structures. Train roadbeds, house foundations, bridge abutments etc. This was the top of an old grain terminal that we passed. It was on the side of the old river bed that forms the basis of the lake here, but because of the way the reservoir was created, you sometimes see these old ruins in the "middle" of the lake. Important to stay in the navigation channel though, as things get shallow quickly and there is lots of silting. The commercial areas on the chart are accurate, but outside the channel things have not been surveyed in a long time. Staying here has got me thinking about forward-looking sonar for our boat........
The trip to Birdsong was only 4 hours, so we took our time getting underway the next day. We ended up chatting with some other boaters on the dock, and so ended up leaving even later. The lake was a bit choppy, despite the fact that it was not windy. The winds have been from the north the last few days, and the current in the lake flows north. The current moving against the wind causes waves to scrunch together and makes for very short-period waves. The ride was not really rough, certainly not like Georgian Bay or lake Michigan, but it was enough to mess with the autopilot a little.
We were nervous coming into Birdsong as the info we had from Active captain suggested that the entrance was tricky, and several posters had reported grounding. Louise and I put on our headsets, and she sat up in the bow to warn if she saw any obstacles or changes in water colour. The channel was narrow and twisty, but the trip was not that difficult - was actually a lot like some sections of the Rideau. All you had to do was follow the markers and the GPS. Should have known. Over the years, when people have told us about groundings, they always say they were "in the channel". However, if you ask about details, it turns out they cut a corner, missed a marker (some are missing), or tried a short cut. The harbour at Merrickville on the Rideau is famous for groundings as people ignore or miss the markers coming in, or don't use their GPS properly. Still, we went dead slow as the depth finder did not show a lot of water under the keel. We pulled into Birdsong in mid-afternoon, and got set up.
Our view from the dock. This is an old paddle-wheel steamer that the resort bought, planning to turn it into a gift shop or something. However, it got damaged bringing it in, and sank. Looks like this happened a looooong time ago.
The docks at Birdsong look like the docks everywhere else, except for the boats. At one time this may have been a place for cruiser-type boats, but no longer. It is an RV park with a pontoon boat marina.
This pontoon had been converted to a floating duck blind. We saw lots of these sprinkled around the channel coming into this place. Hunting season starts in November here, so we should not be around when these become occupied.
The people here were super nice. Everyone stopped to chat, and they offered us the run of the facility. This place is primarily an RV park, while their marina is geared towards pontoon boats and house boats. We were the only cruiser-type boat on the docks. The RV park is very well maintained, and this is a large facility. We found the place to be very clean and neat. There was a pool, and small store.
They put us on the end of their linear dock beside this little gazebo,
One interesting feature here was the pearl farm and museum. Turns out that at one point this was the largest fresh-water pearl operation in the world. In fact, they still had some oysters growing out beside the place. Turns out however, that after the original owner died, it became too difficult to get permits to continue the operation, and so they no longer culture pearls here. They still harvest them though, at least for the next 10 to 20 years when the last of the oysters will be collected.
Just before sundown, a younger couple came out to the gazebo beside us to smoke up. The smell was awful - I think they had a moldy batch - and so we closed all the windows to insulate us from the toxic fog, but Eevee was outside at the time and didn't seem to mind the smell so much, in fact we think she was inhaling.
Back on the boat, we took some time to plan out our next week. We wanted to reduce the amount of time we have been spending in marinas, so we will anchor out for a few days. The National Hurricane centre was predicting that another storm may form in the gulf in a week or so, so we kept an eye on that daily, ready to run for shelter if any nasty weather turns up. Basically the plan is to hang around in Kentucky lake for a week or two, then start our way south towards the Gulf towards the end of the month.
A nice feature of our GPS is that it records our tacks. You can then use these tracks as "breadcrumbs" to backtrack your steps exactly. Helps to avoid issues. On the above display, the left-panel is long range, the right is short-range. Our boat's position is the small boat-shaped cursor near the bottom, and our heading is up (black line ending in a circle). The blue trace is the recording of our position as we came into the marina. The water was all deep, and we had no issues coming in, so we followed our exact track we recorded coming in to get out safely.
A different view of the channel. The left panel shows just how twisty the entrance path was. Several markers were missing, so we followed the old creek bed on the chart. The marina owner wanted to get more cruisers to stop in. I think a good start would be putting out some more markers.
Hanging around Kentucky lake meant backtracking north, so the next morning we got underway and headed to Pebble Isle marina. This is also an AGLCA sponsor, and another massive facility. We tied up on their transient dock, which was filled with other loopers. As it turned out, most of the loopers there were getting their boats closed up for a while. Because of the recent hurricane, people are unsure of the status of facilities in the gulf and in Florida, and rather than continue, have decided to go home for a few weeks. The crews of five boats were getting ready to drive to Nashville the next day to catch flights home. We borrowed the marina's courtesy car, and did some grocery shopping at Walmart, then settled in to watch the Tragically Hip special on Apple TV.
The marina here has a tradition of serving cinnamon buns in the morning. Billy, one of the marina staff, makes these each morning for the visiting cruisers. All the loopers on the dock met in the marina canteen for breakfast. We chatted with quite a few crews, and also with Billy, and the marina owner. As mentioned above, pretty much every other looper seemed to be leaving their boats here so they could go home for a bit.
Transient dock at Pebble Isle. It is the beginning of October, and temperatures would approach 30 degrees C that day.
We decided to head north a bit further and stay at anchor for a few days. Marinas and restaurants are really nice, but they do take a toll on the budget. Staying at anchor a few nights will ease the pain a bit. The weather is supposed to be really nice here for the next week, August-warm temperatures and little to no wind.
Anchoring here is a bit different from other places we have anchored. Normally, you try to tuck the boat close to shore to get protection from the prevailing wind and waves. Doing that is difficult here. The lake is a reservoir that was created by flooding a river channel. There are lots of little "coves" off to the sides of this channel, but they are very shallow and so most are not usable. The ones that are, are old flooded stream beds. The deeper water is in the middle, on the path of the old stream bed, and is fairly far from the shore.
We anchored in Richland bay, pretty much right in the middle, about 0.5 km from any shore. Winds were light but steady from the north, and so we had small waves all day. Because the entrance to the bay was wide, we also had some waves refracting in from the main channel. Annoying because the bay opens to the west, while the winds are from the north and north east. Our anchor held with no issues, but we never stopped rocking and rolling - no big deal really, but gives me something to write about.
The first night in the anchorage, the winds kicked up after dark and so I went to the bow to put out more chain. Probably overkill, but the extra rode ensured we slept well. There was lots of space in this anchorage, and we have the chain, so we used it. Many people believe the anchor holds you in place, but the anchor chain does a lot of the work, if not most. It is the combination of anchor and rode that holds you. Our anchor is a plow, when you put it on the bottom and pull on the chain, it digs into the mud, just like a kind of shovel. Once the anchor is deep enough, it "holds" and you are set to go. To keep you anchored, you need to ensure that the rode - what connects the anchor to the boat, lies as parallel as possible to the bottom. The angle of the rode is important, if it lifts up too much the anchor gets pulled out of the bottom and you are dragging anchor. To prevent this from happening, our rode is made out of chain which, because of its weight, tends to stay as close to the bottom as it can. By letting out more chain, we increase the weight of the rode keeping it more flat on the bottom. More chain also keeps the maximum angle that the anchor can be pulled at small relative to the bottom, which prevents the anchor from being pulled out.
This is the geometry behind anchoring. Putting out more rode keeps the rode parallel to the bottom, which gives you the best angle for your anchor to dig in. To be secure, you want the rode where it connects the anchor to lie flat on the bottom. Chain provides weight to do this. We have all-chain rode, so the more we put out, the more weight we add to keep the rode flat. Some boats use a rope rode. When you have rope rode, the rode should always include a length of chain attached to the anchor that is at least the length of the boat, which will provide weight to hold the rode near the anchor as close to the bottom as possible. When you want to raise the anchor, you shorten the chain (rode) which twists the anchor and pulls it out of the bottom.
How much rode should you put out? This is dictated by geometry. If you assume worst-case heavy winds, then the rode will be pulled straight. This geometry generates a right-angle triangle with two key distances - the length of the rode used, and the distance between the bottom PLUS the height of the attachment point of the rode to the boat above the water. Boaters use a formula to calculate how much rode to use. This formula ensures that the angle the anchor is pulled at never exceeds an amount that will pull out the anchor (shown as alpha above). You take the depth of the water PLUS the height of the attachment point of the anchor to the boat from the surface of the water. Multiply this distance by a number to get the amount of rode to use. To sleep well at night, you use a 7:1 ratio of rode to (depth + attachment height). In really bad conditions (hurricane) you use a 10:1 ratio. Since we have an all chain rode, we normally use a 5:1 ratio if the weather is light. For storms or windy conditions we use 7:1. Our chain is marked, so we know how much we have out. So, more chain = better sleep. Our bow is about 6 feet above the water, and we were in water 10 feet deep. This gives a total "height" of 16 feet. We put out a 7:1 ratio of rode, so we had about 120 feet of chain out.
The next day was pretty quiet. We passed the time reading, snoozing and doing a few chores around the boat. Given that we were safe and secure where we were, and that the other anchorages were pretty similar to this one, we decided to stay put for another day. That evening Louise made blueberry pie for dessert. Yum. We also had it for breakfast the next day! Eventually we got bored of being in the same place, so decided to try another anchorage for a day or two.
Next morning was pretty foggy. It had gotten cold overnight (11 C) and since everyday is humid here, we awoke to a thick bank of fog which burned off slowly as the sun came up. The bay we were in cleared pretty quickly, but there was persistent fog over the main lake for several hours, looked like a low-lying cloud rolling by. Once the visibility was clear, we moved to another anchorage at Standing Rock creek.
When we are anchored, we set an alarm on our GPS, and we also use the GPS track to monitor how we are holding. If your anchor is solid, you see a solid shape formed from the track of your vessel. If your anchor starts to drag, this will show up as a line, or more often, a series of "blobs" separated by lines. The above shows two tracks, red is today's, blue is yesterday's. The overlaid crescents show the anchor has not moved. In fact we were anchored solidly in mud with lots of chain out. We know it was a solid grab as we had some trouble pulling the anchor up out of the mud when we left the anchorage. It is normal to get a crescent shape, as the boat wiggles back-and-forth in the wind. When you are anchored in a current, the boat normally moves less and you don't see a crescent shape, just a blob.
The anchor alarm measures your distance from a set point. When you drop your anchor, you switch on the alarm and set your radius distance. If the boat ever goes outside a circle of this radius from your set point, the alarm goes off to let you know. The system is not perfect. The chartplotter companies never seem to design their anchor alarms with a lot of thought, and so you don't have great control over how the alarms are set and therefore sometimes get false alarms, however better safe than sorry.
