October 14 Day 20: On the Road Again…Er River Again!* (Green Turtle Bay, Ky to Paris Landing, Tn)

We’re back on the river again! Within days of being back home, we longed to be back on our boat “fornt” and on our Loop journey;  but it was good to get a little downtime to allow body parts to heal and buy more stuff for the boat! At least Nick can operate the controls and bend down to re-tie B’s cleat line without pain now. On the buy side, we bought ourselves AMAZING image stabilizing binoculars because we couldn’t read anything on shore with our standard binocs. Yes, we can identify mile markers on the river using the chart–there’s just something gratifying about reconciling details on the chart by actual reference to something on shore. Less importantly, we can also read the brand name of every bass boat we pass! Far more exciting to some, we also got this cool rack thing which Nick managed to install without sinking the boat! It’s important to “create” space on a vessel this size and we got this rack idea from our “sister Bayliner” mentioned in a previous post and pictured above at the Paris Landing Marina tonight with us! [Editor’s note: Captain Don and Nick continue (nearly ad nauseum, fyi)  to compare and contrast pros and cons of the “sister boats”…will they ever tire?]

Nick mounted B’s rack!  B was ecstatic! (haha!)

We’d had a lot of work done on the boat while we were gone which I’m not allowed to detail for fear this turns into “a mechanic’s blog” so let me just say basic maintenance work from outdrive to motor so we’re good for the push to Mobile.

Good bye Green Turtle Bay

After spending a day of boat prep and provisioning, we officially got on “the Loop” the morning of the 14^th leaving Green Turtle Bay and Lake Barkley,  by cutting through a short canal   to start officially heading south on Kentucky Lake.

 

Part of our break strategy had been to allow time for the temperatures to drop and the fall colors to arrive. We got part of it right. Although the fall colors are just beginning to show, the temps have certainly dropped and we spent our first day on the water bundled up with warm clothing. We could have gone inside to steer, but it wasn’t that long a trip to Paris Landing in Tennessee. As it was, we entertained ourselves reading mile markers with our new binoculars (what I say?) and trying to find channel markers. Seems like the markers on this lake are one tenth the size of the markers we’ve seen previously. I guess the main channels are OK, but the charts show markers near shore which are virtually impossible to see. Trust the plotter I guess!

Temps are 30 degrees lower than when we left 2 1/2 weeks ago!  Today started at 52 degrees at 7 am and never got above 63 degrees…add the wind factor and it was nippy!  Ziggy was VERY cold and bundled into a little fur ball.  

But she is happy to be back out on the adventure too! A  brief sliver of sun warmed her up!

*     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mckg0