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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey Day! Tehehehe. I have so much to be thankful for. This year has been quite a highlight of my 14 years of existence. Spending prime time with the people I love, meeting many new people that I have the privilege to call friends, and explored many new places, some of which have the coolest names I have ever heard. I am so lucky and thankful for all of my friends that have helped me through this transition and all of the family that is encouraging me daily. I am thankful for family, cousins, friends, grandparents, sisters, parents, and all of the amazing people who have made this trip so incredible. And of course, good health, water, food, shelter, and Mother Nature and all of her wonders. Oh oh oh! I am also extremely lucky and thankful to have made it to the hurricane benefit concert starring Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Jake Owens, and Caroline Jones. It was an incredibly awesome concert and I loved getting to spend that fun filled night with my dad. Parrot heads for evaaaaa. Hahaha. Fins up! “I wish you lovely weather, more luck than you’ll need.” Jimmy Buffett, I Wave Bye Bye

Gobble gobble,

Heidi 🍂🦃🍁

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Were they messing with us, or just very wrong?

A post by Mark

The adventure continues. As I mentioned in my last post, we followed the lockmaster’s advice and anchored in a small inlet about 15 miles downstream of his lock. If you will recall, he told us there would be plenty of water. He also told us the water would be increasing 1 to 2 feet overnight (a detail I left out last night – figuring it would be irrelevant). Anyway, he was wrong…

We started at 4 1/2′ of water – a little uncomfortable for us – but enough. The next morning, I get up for my regular dinghy ride to the shore with Wille and notice that there is now a significant riverbank on both sides of the inlet, where previously, there was none. When I get to the boat ramp where Willie and I get to shore, the bottom of the ramp is no-longer in the water. The water level didn’t go up 1 to 2 feet – it dropped 1 to 2 feet.

This isn’t good – was the lockmaster messing with us?

We had some hope – as our guidebook told us that we should expect a tidal change of 1 to 2 feet.  It must be low tide now – right???

We start to slowly make our way out of the inlet. We get turned around and make it about 30 feet before our first grounding. We’re going really slowly, so, I’m able to back-up before we get stuck and try to reposition the boat to find some deeper water. Another few wiggles with the boat and we make it another 10′ or so. And then, we stop. We are in 3 1/2 feet of water and stuck in the mud. Note: at this time, we’ve abandoned our depth sounder and are now sticking our boat hook in the water to measure the depth.
So – on to the anchor trick. After a lot of work getting the anchor set, we’re able to pull ourselves out another 20 or so feet. We’re getting close to deep water!!! We now need to unstick our anchor and re-set it another 40 or 50 feet in front of the boat. After even more work, we get it re-set and start pulling. Based on the first few pulls, this last 40 feet are going to be the toughest. In the meantime, Julie calls the NOAA station in Mobile (the weather guys) to try to understand the tides, how much lift we can expect, etc.  The NOAA guy has no idea what Julie is talking about – as the tides have absolutely no impact where we are (Is the guidebook writer messing with us?). He also tells us that the water-levels are forecasted to drop another 6″ today and even more the next day.  This is looking less good by the minute.  Julie then calls the lock, tells the lockmaster what’s up – and he says that there is a boat in the lock that he’ll ask to come help us.  He also says that he’ll see if he can release some water from the dam to help – but we’re 15 miles downstream – so it will take quite some time for us to see the impact.

About an hour later – as we both exhausted from pulling (and making less and less headway), we see our saviors – not the boat from the lock, but a boat from the US Geological Survey that was coming out of the inlet to collect samples (water or mud – I never figured out which one).  Anyway, they weren’t really excited to help – as they were worried about getting stuck, but I was able to explain how they could put their boat in the deep channel and I could bring them a 75′ line from our boat – so they wouldn’t have to get near the shallow water.  Thankfully, they agreed – and in less than 5 minutes, we were free.  Thank you USGS!!!  It took a bit more work to get our anchor free (as we dug it in really deep), but eventually, we got it up and were on our way.  Our 7 AM start turned into a 9 AM start.

I’m really looking forward to getting off of the river!  We have one night left on the river.  We pick an anchorage with 20′ of water!  We should get there about 1 1/2 hours before sunset.  Unless the guidebook is really, really wrong, we should be good!

Bye for now…

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The River giveth, the River taketh away

A post by Mark

The River Giveth

Today, I got a free anchor! For real… Here’s the story.

As has become the new normal, we were trying to get a real early start today – as we were hoping to cover a long stretch of river to get to the next ‘really good’ anchorage. So, the day started at 5:00 – bringing Willie for a walk pre-dawn and pulling up anchor at first light (around 5:45). We were in a really narrow anchorage last night, so we had to carefully spin our boat around to get out. We went really slowly, got pointed in the right direction, and started on our way out. Until we stopped dead in our tracks. What??? We’re in 9 feet of water – we can’t be stuck. But we were. Ugh… Then, to make matters worse, the starboard engine just stops. I idle the other engine to think for a second.. We must be caught on something. While the engine is off, we spin around – and now the port hull is really close to the riverbank (meaning, the bow (front) is in the mud and a few tree branches are brushing up against the side of the boat.) We get our extra anchor out again and start pulling ourselves off the bank. As I set the anchor – the lightbulb goes off and I figure out what’s going on… We’ve wrapped our starboard propeller around something – probably an old rope in the water. Time to get the wetsuit out again. Into the water (now, at least, it’s a bit light out), and under the boat. Well – I was right – we had an old anchor line wrapped around our propeller. As I start to cut it all free, I notice that one end has a lot of tension on it. After I cut that piece, I bring it back up to the surface and Julie ties it to the boat. I clear the rest of the line from the prop and climb back onto the boat. I start pulling on that line – which pulls us off the river bank. After a lot of pulling (and using the engines to back-down on the line), I pull up a ~20 lb anchor.

We then pull up our extra anchor and are on our way – the rest of the exit goes smoothly. We’re out of the anchorage by 6:45 – still possible to make the anchorage – but things have got to go our way the rest of the day.

The River Taketh Away

Since the anchor was really muddy, we left it on the back of our boat – on the stairs that go down to the water. As we motor, water splashes up on the bottom stair and it helps get some of the mud off. Julie also spends a fair amount of time getting the muck off. (Note, the picture above was taken after most of the muck was off it). Fast forward an hour or two… I decide to try to go a little faster and make up some time. I speed up – about ½ mph. About 5/10 min later, I look back – no anchor!!! Turns out, the massive acceleration from 8 to 8.5 mph (I’m a real speed demon) was enough for the anchor to slip backwards off the back of the boat. What a bummer! Oh well.

The Rest of the Day

One of the things that had to go ‘perfectly’ for us to make the anchorage by dark was that we had to make it through one lock – and do it quickly. About 5 miles away from the lock, we see a barge (not an unusual sight). Unfortunately for us, we were going in the same direction – meaning that we were going to have to wait for it to go through the lock before we could (for, even if we passed them, they would go get to go first – as they have priority on the river). No way we’re making the far anchorage now. No big deal though – we talk to the lock operator, he tells us about another spot we can stop, and we head there for the night. We’re there now – and its pretty shallow (the lock operator told us it was 6-8 ft, our depth sounder says 4.5 ft.  Luckily, we draw 3′ 9″)– so we’re waiting until its light out before we leave. I don’t want another pre-dawn bout of excitement. Hopefully, we won’t have any post-dawn excitement either..

Until next time…

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Good Luck in AL

A post by Mark

Good thing we’re having good luck in Alabama. Otherwise, this morning, we would have lost our dinghy, Willie would have run away, I would have lost my shoe in the mud, my phone would have died, and we would have lost our steering in the middle of the channel near a barge. Luckily, none of those happened.

However, the 45 mins from 5:30 to 6:15 this morning were quite exciting.

It started slowly enough – I took Willie for a dinghy ride to the shore to go for a quick walk. I pulled the dinghy up the boat ramp near our anchorage – and explicitly thought – wow, I pulled it up a little too much, may be a pain in the neck to get back in the water.

After a 10 or so min walk, I head down the ramp only to find the dinghy drifting away. We’re anchored just a bit downstream of a lock and dam. Turns out, when they lowered the water in the lock, the run-off raised the water near us about a foot – enough to float the dinghy off the ramp and into the river. I quickly make my way down the ramp – Willie has no idea what’s going on now. I start wading trough the water, banging into big rocks under the water with my shins (fun times). Willie decides that he has gone far enough in the water and hits the brakes. So, I drop his leash and keep going in. Then, I take a step, and come up without my shoe. My other one flips off the next step, and I am quickly waist deep. Time to swim. The dinghy is only 5 or 10 feet away – so it’s pretty easy to get and pull back to shore. Luckily, through this episode, Willie decided to just wade in chest-deep and enjoy the show.

Once we’re back on shore, I start looking for my shoes. Did I mention its still pretty dark out – so, no easy task. I find the second shoe floating a few feet off shore – so I figure the first one must be close. So, now, I’m reaching around in knee-deep muck – and, in less than 30 seconds, I find it. Took a bit of effort to actually pull it out – but as I mentioned in the beginning – we’re having good luck in Alabama and I get it out. Sometime around now, I remember that my phone is in my lifejacket pocket – ugh. I open it up – its damp, but not dripping – and is still working. I shut it down and when I get back to the boat, stick it in a bag of rice (note – not sure if the phone is going to make it – I’m going to keep it on rice for the night).

The ride back to the boat is uneventful. We dry off Willie (and me), and get ready to leave. By now, it’s around 6:15. Up goes the anchor, I use the engines to turn us around and head us out of the anchorage, and start to use the steering wheel to maneuver us out. Funny thing – the wheel doesn’t seem to do much. I turn it to the left – we don’t go left. I turn it to the right – we don’t go right. At one point, I spin it around like a cartoon – just to confirm my fear. Yep – no steering. Good thing we have only moved about 6’ from lifting the anchor. So – down goes the anchor again. The steering fix turns out to be pretty simple – a set screw had worked its way out and the gear that connects the wheel to the rudders fell off its axel. We quickly found all the parts, put it back together (now, with Loctite on the screw), and were lifting the anchor and on our way in 15 / 20 minutes. The rest of the day was uneventful – 51 miles downriver – we were at the marina by 12:45. Later tonight, we’re taking the marina’s courtesy car to the local Walmart Supercenter to re-stock on food / drink / etc. After being on the boat 12-days straight, this is a real highlight!

As I write this, I’m looking at this plaque on our boat…

Truer words have never been spoken – for this has been a great adventure so-far.

Note: The phone is dead… It may be doing something, but the screen is fried (I dropped it a few months ago and it cracked – so I’m guessing the combination of cracked screen and water wasn’t a good one). Oh well… we were planning to only have one phone anyway.

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We made it to the ocean!

A post by Mark

Hi all,

As Lucy mentioned in her post, we’re safe and sound in Mobile AL.  We were very happy to get to Mobile Bay – as the last few days of the river were getting a bit old.  I have 2 or 3 posts that I wrote on the river but had no way to upload (we were in the proverbial ‘middle of nowhwere’).  I’ll post those shortly – the wifi here is pretty slow.

Bye for now…

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Tree Get Out Of My Window

NOTE: This was a few days ago, now we are unstuck and happy in the ocean in Mobile AL

Hi everyone! WELL, in the last two days lots have happened! I will tell the main things, and like always, please note that this might be a little exaggerated. All is good now, don’t you worry. Wait, we just got stuck again, in what we thought were tides, we are still stuck while I am writing this. We are better now, don’t you fear!

Wednesday, November eight,
“BRREEEMMMP BREEEM” I woke up with a start as the engine turned on. I stayed up for a minute then went back to sleep as I usually did when we first started. I was half sleeping half awake when the engine suddenly stopped. Now you might be thinking for me, finally some peace and quiet. But no, that is not good, I thought.
“Lucy,” Sally said awoke by the stop of the motor, “what happened?”
“I am not sure,” I replied a little scared. But sure enough I was talking to someone who was asleep. I stayed up expecting the engine to turn back on, but it didn’t. I looked at the window to get some assurance that we were fine, but what I got was exactly the opposite!
“Sally!” I said flicking her arm.
“Wha, evil gummy bear go away, OH MY GOSH, THAT TREE IS ON OUR WINDOW!” Sally finally came out of her dream land!
I quickly grabbed my shoes, as I wondered, what happened this time?
“Got your life jacket,” Sally exclaimed as we headed out to see what happened.
“What is happening?” Sally asked before I could.
Then the words came, the oh to familiar words came, three words my new least favorite. We are stuck, again.
“What should I do?” I asked eager, like the rest of us to get us out of the trees.
“Nothing yet, I just don’t know why we are stuck.” Said Dad as we started to pull our selves with the anchor, but it didn’t improve.
Finally, Dad thought he might have to go swimming, again, because the propeller wasn’t right, gosh, I might have to skip yesterday and go to today, there are some awful noises right now.
OK, so, this is Thursday, November 9th.
We just got stuck, again! So we are in what are supposedly tides, but don’t change for a day or something. I don’t really get it. Confused face.
So, you probably know what I am going to do now right? Well, this time I wasn’t that scared, surprisingly, not sure if that is a good or bad thing. Sally went up and asked what happened. I will let you figure the next part out. Just kidding, we are stuck. So now Mom and Dad are running our faucets and water out, (not the one we drink) into the river. Over about 50 gallons we only got an inch higher. We called the lock and tried to get more water on our side, but that would take awhile. Then this sample getting crew came by us. They asked us if we were ok. We said, yes, but we are stuck. They didn’t want to get stuck too, so when we asked them if they could maybe give us tow, they were hesitant at first. But, after we got our bridal with a long line attached they did it. Thank you so much to the USGS!!!!! Well, the rest of the day was a lot less eventful. It was nice to be at a nice anchorage after. Oh wait, I have to finish the first part.

Continued for Wednesday

“Huh,” Dad huhed as he realized someone else anchor was attached around our propeller. After a lot of work of uniting and cutting the line it finally came undone with an anchor!!!
So yay, we got a free anchor and we are unstuck now!
————————————Three hours Later——————————————
No one was outside except for dad. We were trying to get to a certain anchorage so we sped up and flush. There goes the new anchor! = (

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Going down the Jamie Whitten Lock

Time lapse of us dropping 82 feet in about 8 minutes. 

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​​note – this was a few days ago. We’re now in warm and sunny Alabama. Only a few more locks to go before we are at sea level – and about a week until we are a true sailboat again. 

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Mississippi- why do you hate me – part II

More from Mississippi…

After wrapping up writing the first part of this post, we checked the weather and realized we were in for some more thunderstorms. Julie and I took Willie for one last walk of the evening, and as we got back to the boat, we could feel the change in the air. By 10:00, it was booming out – big winds, rain, etc. Really, a great show. Since our dock was really well protected, we were very comfortable in the storm (it was just very loud and bright). 

The next day… We get up really early again to get through the lock and have time to walk around a small town about 5 hours away. We shove off at 6:45, and this time, however, the lock-gods are with us. We make it through without a hitch. Has our luck in Mississippi finally turned? Turns out – no….   

To get to this town (Columbus MS),  we need to turn off the main channel into a smaller one. The guidebook warns that the water can get shallow at the junction – as low as 6 ft. Since we draw only 3 ½ feet, we’re cautious, but feel comfortable going in. Any guesses what happens next? You got it, as I’m driving in, I see the depth sounder go from 6’ to 2.5 ft in about 2 seconds…. Smack dab into a sandbar (more like a mudbar – if that’s really a ‘thing’). Either way, we’re stuck. We try our trusty anchor trick – no luck (we can spin the boat – but we’re not going anywhere). Ugh… Good thing we bought tow insurance. A call to TowBoat US and about an hour or so later, the towboat arrives. He tells us that he pulled a 56’ boat off this same spot a few days earlier. Not sure if we was telling me this to make me feel any better – but if he was, it worked. At least I’m not the only idiot to get stuck here. Fortunately, the getting unstuck process goes smoothly – and we’re on our way. Only 20 miles to Alabama (fingers crossed).


Note:  As I hit send on this post, we’re at a comfortable anchorage in Alabama… sweet (temporary) home Alabama!

 

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Changes

                                                 Changes                       

                                            By: Lucy Vannini

                There are lots of difference when you live on a boat. No matter how hard you try, it won’t be the same as a house. Some things you wish you have but you don’t, some things are way harder. There are lots of different tweaks and changes you have to make when you live on a boat. Changing your lifestyle completely one might say. The benefits overweigh all the cost another might say. On a house you can’t swing on a hammock over the water, on a boat you can’t walk to school everyday with friends. You can decide what you think, but first let me explain life on a boat versus one on a house.

                Changes are hard. They sometimes make you sad. Everyday routines vary a lot depending where and what you live on.  Yes, we all live on Earth, yes we all live on the same ground, but how we do it, is the key. It makes everyone special, I am going to start by talking about how that affects me.

                               

                Morning is about the same. You wake up. What you do differs though. In a boat you normally wake up do all the morning things; brush teeth, comb hair, etc. When you get up, you don’t have to rush to be out of the door by 8 o’clock but you do have to start school at a reasonable time. Yes, sometimes reasonable time stretches when we wake up at 11 o’clock the day after we started early. In the morning on a boat there is a lot more freedom to when you start things as long as you finish.

                Mid-day (school time). School. It is like a octopus in the waves. It always is there sucking on to you. But….you can make school more fun then the word “school.”  Homeschooling is like regular school plus lots more attention and freedom minus spending some time with your friends. An average school day on homeschooling is about 3-4 hours versus the long and ever lasting 7 hour school days. So, in my opinion that’s a plus. Another difference is that in homeschooling you can work wherever you want and can take more breaks. You can also play music, chew gum, and more things that you wouldn’t  necessarily be allowed to do in public school.

            Being able to move. I would have never thought before I moved on a boat that your home could get stuck in a sandbar or tangled up in riverweed. Being able to move your home wherever you want is fun! You can be in Alabama one day, and Florida the next. There are always new fun experiences in the new places. You can see lots of differences in what you do in just two states. Although some places aren’t as great as others, you can always not spend as much time there, and spend more time in fun places.

             Cooking, whether you are on a boat or house you still cook, you can cook the same things. The difference is how easy it is. Houses are easier to cook in, but boats give you more opportunities to cook things all the way from scratch. For example an dinner at your house might be pizza for example. So, you can just Domino’s and get it delivered. But on a boat you can make the crust and sauce and add toppings. On a boat you can make things from scratch that are better because you don’t get the option of ordering pizza to your boat.

     Friends.  They are special. You miss them. On a boat it is a little different making friends. Basically any kids you meet become  you friends pretty quick. On the river, there was one other kid that we barely even met,  we were with them for two days. We didn’t have that much time to meet each other unfortunately. So, once we get to the Caribbean, we will get to meet new people and kids. Both from the islands, and boaters. Basically, once we become friends with the boaters we can maybe change our path according to where they are going. So right now, I haven’t met that many friends.

     There are lots of differences when you live on a boat. No matter how hard you try, it won’t be the same as living on a house. Some things you wish you had but you don’t, some things are way harder. There are lots of different tweaks and changes you have to make when you live on a boat. Changing your lifestyle completely, one  might say. The benefits overweigh the cost, another might say. On a house you can’t swing over the water on a hammock, but on a boat  you can’t walk to school with friends every day with your friends. Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey.

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Mississippi – why do you hate me? A two part series

A Post by Mark
Note – I didn’t originally plan this to be a two-parter, but Mississippi was the gift that kept on giving.  Part II tomorrow…

Part I

As I write this, we just experienced a beautiful sunset and stunning moon-rise from a free dock in a great little harbor. 


The 24 hours preceding it were maybe the toughest yet. Here’s the story…

Thursday afternoon, we head into our planned anchorage – a (supposedly) dog friendly spot (i.e. easy to get Willie on and off the boat). We’re struggling a bit to figure out how to get from the channel we’re in to the anchorage – as the directions in the guidebook seem a bit conflicting with what we’re seeing. Alas – we spot the small channel that leads from the main channel towards the shore. As we are heading right down the middle of the channel, we run into a bed of river-weeds (I assume that’s what you call seaweed in a river?). The boat stops dead in its tracks. We check the depth – plenty of water. We’re caught in the weeds. I try to back the boat up – nothing… the weeds are wrapped around the propellers. I try to go back and forth to free-up the props – the port (left) engine / prop seems to be working better, but the starboard (right) one is not doing anything – other than starting to emit a bunch of white smoke. This isn’t good… Luckily, Julie is smarter than me (not exactly a newsflash…) – and has the solution. We end up getting our stern anchor and tossing it out so we can pull the boat out of the weeds. After two tosses and a trip about 40 ft from the boat in our dinghy to drop the anchor further out, we pull ourselves out using the anchor and are free of the weeds. The port engine seems to be fine now, but the starboard one is not happy – so we shut it down for now. We limp ahead and find another way into the anchorage. Once we are settled, its time to go swimming under the boat to clear the weeds from the propellers. Even with a wetsuit, the water was chilly. Its also muddy – so going under the boat is pitch-black. I feel my way around and am able to clean out the weeds. I unwind a lot of stuff – so I’m encouraged that the engines should run better the next day. At this point, its starting to get dark – so I need to get a move-on to get Willie to the shore for a quick walk / potty break. Sally, Willie, and I hop into the dinghy and head to shore. Between the weeds (which the dinghy can’t penetrate) and really shallow sand bars, we can’t get near the shore. We end up stopping on a marshy sandbar and try to walk Willie up and down the tiny bit of solid land trying to get him to go to the bathroom. Based on how this story is going so far, I’m guessing you know how this went (not good). After what felt like forever, we had to give-up – as it was past dusk and now dark. Back to the boat – time to check the engines – belt tension, oil levels, coolant levels, etc. I start with the starboard one. I open the engine compartment to find oil everywhere – yikes. Then I see the oil cap is off – and realize that when I checked the engine the day before and topped off the oil, I forgot to put the cap back on. After a round of expletives, I get out the degreaser and clean up the engine. Once everything is cleaned back up, I check the other engine (all good), clean myself up, and have a great dinner (rice, bean, and cheese enchiladas).

After a smooth night at anchor, we woke up early and were moving by sunrise. Our goal was to get through the first lock of the day early so we wouldn’t get held up at the lock and could get Willie to a dock by about noon to go for his walk. We are close to the lock – and in the motoring to it, the engines both seem to run well – except that the starboard engine is still smoking more than it should. We get to the lock – only to find out that the lockmaster is holding the lock for 7 other boats (where was this guy when we got stuck in the rain a few days ago!). Ugh… almost an hour later, we finally get through the lock. As we’re going, the boat equivalent of the “Check Engine” light comes on for – you guessed it – the starboard engine. Message – high coolant temperature. Ugh… We shut it down, Julie hops up to the steering wheel, and I head down to see what’s up. I’m expecting to find that we broke the belt that drives the water pump (that has happened before – I know how to change that pretty quickly). I open up the engine which is under our bed – so I’m tossing bedding everywhere. All belts look fine. We start it up again so I can watch the engine – and the light is now off. Hmm… what to do. We run the engine for a bit longer – all looks good in the compartment – but Julie notices that there is a lot less water coming out of the starboard engine than the port one. The way the radiators in the engines are cooled is by outside water coming into the engine and being ‘spurted’ out of the boat. So, we shut it down again and I pull apart the water pump to see if its OK. I get it apart and notice that it is a ‘little’ broken (basically, it is pretty worn – but likely not the cause of the problem). I have the right spare parts and rebuild the pump – but as I feared, it didn’t fix the problem. I get everything put back together about 10 or 15 min before the next lock. Our plan now is to get to a dock so we can figure out our water blockage. By now, all 7 of the boats have passed us (as we’re only running one engine)- so we’re now last in like to get through the next lock. When we get to the lock, there is a barge in a portion of the lock – so not all of us will be able to lock through. This turns out to be somewhat of a blessing – as we see a small marina just to the side of the lock that we pull into. Willie is beyond happy at this stop as well. Julie and Sally took him for a walk – and without getting into the details, let me tell you that he needed to go!

Now – years of watching MacGyver finally paid off (and maybe engineering school too – but I’m giving most the credit to MacGyver – although, unfortunately, no chewing gum or duct tape was used in this repair).

Here’s the story… we figure something is blocking our water intake – probably the lousy weeds from the day before. Unlike a lot of other boats (and all other ones I’ve been on before), there is no water strainer that you can easily clear out and be on your way. To clear this blockage, we need to backflush the system. How the heck are we going to do this? There are certainly no tools at this marina we just pulled into (it was very run-down and a bit depressing). So, we pull out a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket and our small 12 volt pump. A random fitting and a hose clamp later, we have the output of the pump connected to the water intake hose and are pumping 5 gallons of water backwards out the intake. A second bucketful of water later, the intake was clear as can be. We put everything back together, started up the engine – and all was good. The check engine light was off, the right amount of water was coming out of the engine, and not a trace of smoke was coming out of the exhaust. Unbelievable! The day was turning around!

We end up going through the lock – only missing one ‘turn’ of the lock – and are on our way. Less than an hour later, we hit a small – but really strong storm.  For context, there have been possible thunderstorms in the forecast for each of the past three days- but haven’t had any. Until today…  While the lightning never gets too close, the wind and rain did  – complete wash-out conditions a handful of times. Really not a lot of fun. Luckily, the really bad conditions were relatively short-lived and we were able to get to full-speed again shortly. Because of our wait at the first lock, our running one engine for a while and our slowdown during the storm – we weren’t going to be able to make it to our preferred anchorage – which is just downstream of the next lock. Instead, we stop at a free dock before the lock – which turned out to be a great spot. 

To be continued..,