We've met many of the crews we traveled with down the river. It was great to catch up with their stories and learn more about them. Kewl!

We expect to launch early next week, weather permitting.

11/21/04- We finished the painting, AA is ready for the water. It will be good to get off the hard and feel the boat move again.

11/22/04- "AA" is back in the water, tomorrow we'll stand the mast and start rewiring and rigging.

11/23/04- Barry was rigging all morning, spent the afternoon on Dangerous Love helping Tony and Vicky pattern a dodger. The forecast is for severe weather tonight and it's been sprinkling on and off all afternoon - not a good time for mounting sails.

11/24/04- The morning was rough, high winds, a lot of rain, tornado watches - all associated with an approaching cold front. We worked indoors on small tasks and the website.

Turner Marina's owners put together a Thanksgiving dinner for the marina. Wow, what a feast! It was great to get together with crews from other boats and the marina staff.

11/25/04- Barry spent the morning helping Tony lay-out and cut a dodger for Dangerous Love. We celebrated Thanksgiving with them on their boat with some of their friends who had just driven down from Paducah, KY. Had a great evening. Headed back to the boat in low 40's under a bright moon and clear skies - another cold front!

11/27/04- AA is a sailboat again! The sails are on, the mast is tuned. Just a few maintenance issues (oil change, etc) and we are ready to move on. Barry helped Tony sew the dodger for Dangerous Love (they've been cooking dinners as thanks).

Nights have been cold, in the low 40's, while the days are in the 70's. We've had the diesel heat on almost every night.

We had several heavy rainstorms pass through. Al and Claudia passed on the info that a boat they were traveling down the Tenn-Tom with stopped in Demopolis to have a prop repaired while they continued, arriving mid last week. The heavy rains raised the waterway 30 feet! They are stranded in Demopolis as the locks are completely under water and trees, houses, etc are floating down the river. They expect to be trapped there a week or two before the water drops and cleans up. It's hard to believe that the water could raise that much in a couple of days, but it is one of the things we'd been warned to watch for, especially when anchoring.

11/28 to 12/3/04- Time is passing too fast. We sailed AA yesterday, crossing the bay to watch the Fairhope yacht club race. They had about 35 boats in 6-7 knot winds. It was great to be under sail though watching a race brings out the urge to try it.

Barry has been working on Searchin, a Catalina 40'er with Al. They sanded the bottom and did some keel and rudder repairs. In between he's been finishing up tasks on AA.

The list keeps growing - on Saturday we learned the radar isn't working right. Spent Sunday inside checking connections, tomorrow it's up the mast to check the scanner and each wire back to the junction box at the foot of the mast. Raining too hard to work outside. November/December are a lot like June on Green Bay - rainy, cool at night, high 50's to mid-70's during the day depending on what kind of front is moving through.

12/4/04- Buddy has a vet appointment today so he has a health certificate to fly home with Ruth tomorrow. Barry will head north a week later - has to finish AA up and the two projects for others. We've tickets to return to Mobile the first week of January when we'll head for the Bahamas via Florida's west coast.

12/5/04- Ruth and Buddy headed home. Barry took on a commission to sand and varnish the interior of Searchin. He also serviced all the systems on AA, installed a fan in the master cabin and sewed a dinghy cover. The radar antenna was packed and sent to Ray Marine.

The boat is very quiet with Ruth and Buddy gone!

12/17/04- Barry headed home to the Valley, arriving just in time to plow snow.

The holidays passed quickly with visits to family and friends. Soon it was January 7th and time to fly back to Mobile.

1/8/05- We used a weekend rental from Enterprise to get wheels. It was great to have the mobility for provisioning!

Last minute preparations, re-installation of the radar, and good byes to friends took a couple of days. We also took the opportunity to return our EPRIB for warranty service.

1/12/05- We departed Turner Marine under a 70 degree sun for the bay crossing to the eastbound Inter-Coastal Waterway, headed for Pensacola. AA was on the move again - it felt great!

Return to Loop Route

Another Adventure partially sanded

Barry partially finished

Mobile marked the end of the river system

Shrimper done up for Christmas

12/15/04 Tenn-Tom Update

Water Music arrived at Turner after being stranded in Demopolis for over two weeks by high water. They reported that the floating docks created a community of live-aboards and transient boaters. The short bus shown in the galleries was sighted floating by to points unknown (reason 1002). When they resumed their journey the Coffeyville lock was only a 2' drop (versus 30' when we came through). They were glad to be in Mobile headed for the FL Keys.

On communications

We quickly learned that wilderness and cell phones don't mix well. Even with two carriers we often went hours without any connection. Internet was even more tentative, often days would go by without an e-mail connection - then to find we could only download our mail. At Turner Marine Ruth's number works, my Sprint does not.

If we did it again we'd get a satellite phone for e-mail and phone calls - probably a tri-modal unit. We also changed our e-mail provider to an internet based one to facilitate sending e-mail (we could receive, but not send through Road Runner). AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail work. Wi-Fi is available in some of the marinas at about $10/day (check to see what constitutes a day - sometimes it ends up being only until midnight the day you log on; other times it's 24 hours).