Days 168 – 170; Nov 4 – 6: We left our anchorage in Standing Rock Creek, TN as planned around 10:00 am headed to an anchorage just outside of Birdsong Marina in Camden, TN. Birdsong is a very small marina that didn’t have room for all 3 of us, so we anchored out. It was a tricky entrance to the creek, making a large circle around a shallow area that to the naked eye looked fine, but the charts said otherwise! Lil Sudden only draws 3’ and made it across, seeing as little as 5 feet of water. We took the longer, deeper, more conservative route (as did Saga) since we draw 5 feet. We rafted the 3 boats around 4:30 pm and enjoyed Mayli’s “marry me chicken” over rice.
We had finally found some reasonably warmer weather and shed our layers and jackets, eating outside in the cockpit of Legacy. All the fishing poles came out but alas the fish were elusive and they remained fishing poles vs. catching poles. We enjoyed watching the wild life and were treated to a beautiful sunset.
Sunday, 11/5 we were up and out around 9:00 am. As we enjoyed our coffee and breakfast, we saw 2 loopers go by who had stayed at the Marina and were headed out early. It ended up being a bad day for one of them having decided to go straight across that shallow area instead of around the long way. Hopscotch, a 36’ Grand Banks, was hard aground and working to get back into deeper water using their dinghy, anchor and windlass. They would take the dinghy and drop the anchor in deeper water, then pull the boat with the windlass toward the anchor. They were making progress slowly but surely as we went by. Not much we could do to help without endangering ourselves. Despite losing several hours getting “unstuck,” they seemed to have no damage from the ordeal and arrived at the same anchorage as us that night, a little more tired and a little more wise.
Back to our trip….we ran for a few hours and checked out several creeks along the way that should have been good anchorages, but with the water so low (we are now on the Tennessee River) they were a “no-go” so we continued on. It made for a longer day than we had planned, finally anchoring around 3:00/3:30 pm when we thought it would closer to noon. Not a big deal – it just brought us closer to Clifton which was our planned destination for Monday, 11/6.
Dinner was a team effort inspired by a facebook cooking video Carol had seen on calzones. We made 4 large calzones (1 glutton free for Annette) that included decorating them with dough and veggies that made them quite unique….food art! They were pretty and tasty at the same time filled with tomato sauce, ground beef, Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese, spinach, basil and mushrooms! They were lots of fun and yummy too! Credit for video below to Mayli on Saga!
11/6 (Monday) we were up and out around 8:00 am, headed to Clifton which we expected to be a 2-3 hour run. Carol had meetings all afternoon (2:00 – 6:30) so we were thankful Tonia was making dinner. We arrived around 10:30 am finding a beautiful and spacious anchorage, eager for some leftover Calzones!
Although we continued to observe low water levels (atleast 5 feet below normal) our ride here was pretty uneventful. The threat of rising water and power of the river was clear in the height of the supports under the houses/structures to keep them from flooding when the river rises. The edges of the river were very interesting layers of rock and WOW on the number of stairs to the waters edge!
Tomorrow we are off to Wolf Island, about a 3.5 hour run where we will anchor again…. Then onto Grand Harbor/Pickwick where we have a reservation for 2 days in a marina. We will reprovision there.
chashurley
Great clouds at Birdsong and an extraordinary calzone video!!