Mermaids and Engine Troubles on the Tennessee 10-10-2014

 

October 10, Friday

 

We started early, once again. We were the first out of the marina, and were hailed by fellow Midwesterners, all with coffee cups in hand, wishing us well.

We passed the Mermaid Marina, a stellar piece of advertising:

 

Mermaid Marina, Decaturville, Tn

And perhaps we should have stopped there.

All was well for 6 ½ hours.  Then, as we got within 1500 feet of the Pickwick Lock and Dam in 3 knots of current it all went bad. Real bad.  The motor sputtered several times, lost power and stopped. Dead. No amount of throttle mashing or starter-motor grinding had any effect.

Since we were a sailboat Tim deployed the jib to see if we could get out of the main channel, avoid running into the channel markers and get to somewhere shallow enough to deploy the backup anchor.

About the only good thing we had going was that we were heading upstream to the dam. At least we didn’t need to worry about being sucked over the dam.

Then, a second good thing happened. An elderly fisherman in a duck boat with an old 25 horsepower motor passed by and stopped to help.   He towed us for about 20 minutes to a safe anchorage, next to a rock wall, below a trailer park.  When we asked if we could pay for his gas, he allowed as how he hoped someone would help him out sometime.

While the trailer park residents watched our antics from the shore, we called BoatUS for a tow.  They told us it may take an hour to get to us since the towboat was on the other side of the lock, and had to lock through. So we hunkered down and waited.  Sure enough, the tow showed up.  We hooked up to the tow, brought in our anchor, and steered our boat to keep behind him.  

Into the lock we went, untethered from the tow, and hooked onto a bollard. The dam took us up some 50 feet to Lake Pickwick. We retied to the tow and exited the lock. 

When we hailed the lockmaster to thank him for his patience, he responded, “no problem, Sea Fever, you have a good rest of the trip.  Take care, Kathy. They knew my name!

The tow decided to take us to Aqua Marina, since it has a full service department.  He called ahead and assured that Tony, the head service guy, would come see us promptly on Saturday morning.

We were towed at least 7 miles, about 1.5 hours, and were tucked in by the security guard at the gas dock about 9 pm. In the dark.  Two very weary travelers.

Thanks for reading.