Catching up...

Once again, time has got away from me, and it's been several weeks since my last post.  It's also hard to believe that we have been living on the boat for 4 months now!  We continue to fine tune the maintenance and repair aspect of getting her 'ship shape' for the big journey coming up.  Latest in the list of things that need to be repaired is the windlass, which broke down on our last trip out, but I'll get to that shortly.

Michael made a quick trip back to Canada in July to help his mother celebrate her 91st birthday!  It was a complete surprise for her, and she thoroughly enjoyed his visit.  I stayed here on the boat, with Edee, and our neighbours made sure I wasn't too bored - there was a margarita party on the Saturday afternoon, then a group dinner out that evening.  It was a wet week, with rain most days, but we did get some lovely rainbows.  If you look closely, you can see that this is a double one!

Last Saturday, we took another trip out on the river, and I was captain for the day (a slight demotion from my usual role of Admiral) which meant that I was responsible for the operation and navigation of the boat from beginning to end.  We left the slip with ease, traversed the narrow channel out to the main river without incident, and selected the spot to anchor and have a swim.  The windlass stopped working as we dropped anchor - not a big problem in itself, as we were able to let out enough anchor rode by hand.  We spent several hours floating in the warm waters, scrubbing the muck off the waterline, and generally enjoying being out of the marina.

This tug went past while we were there.  It's a small one, as river barges go, but still big enough to create a reasonable swell as it went.  You can see a patch of green, weedy stuff growing up to the surface between us and the main channel.  This is milfoil, a non-native plant that is taking over in parts of the river.  It grows in the shallower areas, and is very difficult to control, creating some real navigation challenges.  The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) sprays and chops on a regular basis, but we need to be very cautious when moving out of the main channel to anchor.  There are natural paths which follow old creek beds, and the locals are very generous in sharing their knowledge of safe areas.  

My crew (Michael) was keeping an eye on the weather, and noticed a darkening of the sky in the distance, so we decided to head home, knowing that storms can spring up very quickly in the heat of summer.  Michael hauled the anchor up by hand, and we were on our way.

I must point out that, while I have driven the boat a number of times on the river, this was to be my first attempt at docking.  As you may have noticed from some of the photos in my earlier posts, each boat has its own slip, with fingers down both sides of the slip.  To make it even more complicated, we keep the boat backed in.  The boarding steps, power cables, docking lines, etc are all set in this position, so I didn't have much choice in the matter.

It being Saturday afternoon, the dock was crowded with all the weekenders, who scrambled to 'help' as I made my approach.  With my personal coach (Michael, again) providing direction as needed, I worked the throttles to control the boat - port engine forward makes the bow swing to the right, port engine reverse makes the aft swing to the right, with equal and opposite reactions if using the starboard engine - and don't ever touch the steering wheel!  We slipped into position as if I'd been doing this forever, much to my own and everyone else's surprise!  Word spread quickly that "Mundy brought Done Dreamin' in!" and I have now been accused of making the other ladies look bad.  Oh well.

Yesterday was Michael's birthday, and our original plan had been to visit the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, followed by a bit of shopping and a nice dinner out.  We cancelled the Space Center visit, however, after a stormy night of little sleep and opted for a late start, a little shopping, and then dinner.  This restaurant was recommended by the folks next door, and did not disappoint. We had a great meal of mostly local and sustainable foods - gulf shrimp stuffed with cheese grits, Georgia clams and more gulf shrimp, local greens, and house made black bean tamales with smoked tomato salsa.  Yumm.

Notice the flag on this historical marker.  One day a few weeks ago, Michael and I saw a pontoon boat flying a massive flag like this.  It took us a while to figure out that they were not Irish at all - and that this is the Alabama state flag, taken from the early Irish settlers.

Now, today's chores beckon...who knew retirement would be so busy??