Great Loop Date: 10.12.2010 (Wednesday): OB and the Mermaid …

...and an anniversary of sorts.  As of today, we've been Looping for 2 months:

Day #61: 1501.3 total miles (43.8 miles)
Locks: 12 total (today: 0)
Port #28 – Mermaid Marina; Decaturville, TN

The skies changed Tuesday morning, the day we planned to leave Pebble Isle Marina. The old saying goes ‘Red sun in morn’, sailors take warn’. The sun came up red, surrounded by clouds.

Our destinations for the next two days were two anchorages. They would get us closer to Pickwick, TN and the convergence of the Tenn-Tom Waterway with the Tennessee River. Our little fleet of 5 boats left the marina at 8:30AM under partly cloudy skies.

The lake now became the Tennessee River again. However, the scenery continued to be forested limestone cliffs. Each day the leaves are stronger in fall colors. Today it was more difficult to catch the beauty with the mostly cloudy conditions and the developing haze.

We passed a town and marina named Cuba. Todd and I laughed. We had now visited Havana and gone past Cuba. Fishing must have been good in Cuba since there were many fishing boats wetting their lines.

Just after Cuba we came across this natural phenomena...
a tree growing in the shape of a cross!

I’m starting to wonder if anyone works in Tennessee. We pass so many fishing boats every day.

I really want to wet a line myself but am fairly certain the Department of Natural Resources would pay me a visit. I even checked on out-of-state licensing for three days but didn’t buy one.

We passed a cross on the river bank. It was labeled ‘David’. It looked like the crosses we’ve seen on highways marking spots where someone died in an accident. We both wondered if there had been a boat wreck there or some kind of water related accident.

There are still coves but they aren’t as big as the ones we saw in Kentucky Lake. The river was more twisting and turning as well. Anchorages will be behind small islands from now on.

NII Wishin and Sea Estate heading into one of the turns.

We saw this nice little cabin along side the river...

...and further up river, there were these nice homes.

Then came more cliffs and more fall colors.

This old tow seemed really out of place in these surroundings.  We hadn't seen anything like this since the Illinois River!

We have our VHF radio set to scan six stations now (Channel13-for locks, 16-emergency, 17, 68-both are open channels for pleasure boaters, 71, and 73-working channels for barges). I found out one more channel will transmit when necessary. A severe weather bulletin from NOAA broke the silence in the pilothouse. Severe thunderstorms were marching through Tennessee and developing southwest of us. I looked on the computer and Todd immediately brought up Serus weather on our Raymarine. NOAA on the computer didn’t show what was developing on Serus.

We were 8 miles from our intended anchorage. Todd radioed the flotilla and gave them the information he had found on Serus. A decision had to be made by each boat; go on to the anchorage or find a marina nearby. Todd and I have ridden out storms at anchor before however we’d much rather take storms while secured to a dock if at all possible. Our decision was made.



Two marinas were in the area. I tried to call Perrysville Marina. An answering machine told me to leave a message. We looked at the entrance and it looked shallow. Todd kept OB moving on up river. A short distance away was Mermaid Marina. I called and the dockmaster answered. He said although they were closed, they still had power and depth to take us. NII Wishin and Sea Estate made the decision to stop, as well.

Blue Angel and Miss Ruby have had a great deal more experience in this area. They have been through storms here and elsewhere. They know how their boats respond. They both made the decision to continue to the anchorage.

The entrance to Mermaid Marina.

Getting into Mermaid Marina was tricky. The river is getting close to winter pool and has made many areas shallow. Todd had to keep OB in the middle of a tiny channel. We had plenty of depth once past the opening and the office.

Once we were in, the dock was fine.  The office was on an old rusting barge.  Definitely not in as good a shape as Hoppies but it was our harbor of refuge today.

The first storm that passed by as about an hour after we got into the marina.

More storms formed to the southwest and kept coming over us for the next 4 hours.

The air was heavy and still. Thunderheads blossomed to our southwest. We had a lot of rain and huge bolts of lightning on all sides of us. There was little wind associated with the storms that rolled through. All the activity had settled by the time we went to bed. We had a few showers during the night but all was well on OB.