This has been a crunch week. Thursday I drove to Florence…765 miles…  pulling 20 foot trailer full of machinery for the shop…compressors, drill press, radial saw, etc. It’s a long drive but can be done in a day. Made it in about 13 hours. Unoaded everything with the caterpillar on Friday and then decided that I needed to get back to Houstobn because Huricane Gustov was headed this way and I have wife, mother-in-law and nine donkies to take care of back home. If I left my wife with the donkies to ride out the storm while I was in Florence, I would be dead anyway. Might  as well have plastic surgery, change my name and move to another state.  Or maybe I could get into a Federal protection program.   Got back in the truck and drove the 765 miles back to Houston yesterday. Left Florence at 4AM with the idea that I would be back in Houston in the late afternoon. That didn’t happen. It never dawned on me that they would be in the process of evacuating New Orleans and all of southern Lousiana. I went south to interstate 10 and got hammered in Lafayette. Traffic was bumper to bumper moving about 10-20 miles per hour from Lafayette Lousiana all the way into Houston. Unfortunately there is no real good alternate route. I thought it might break a little when I got into Texas but unfortunately they  were evacuatiing Beaumont and Port Arthur Texas also so that added to the mayhem of people tryng to get out heading west.  Gas stations were out of gas and people were stuck along the roadside out of fuel.. People we driving like lunatics racing down the shoulders tryng to get somewhere fast but in reality going nowhere. I had brought about 100 gallons of diesel fuel with me along with as many Jerry cans of gasoline as I could round up in Florence. So I was well prepared in the fuel department. I finally got into Houston about 10:30 last night… 6 hours later than I planned. Now were are sitting here watching Gustov on TV trying to anticipate where it’s going and what we should do. As of right now it looks like Lousiana is the target but if it turns westerly at all it could come this way and end up right over Houston. We have learned over the many years living on the Gulf coast that these storms can turn at the last minute and miss the targeted landfall by a couple of hundred miles as was the case with Rita. If that happens we have to get the donkeys out of here.  Just getting out of Houston with a trailer full of donkies could be a good trick but I know a lot of the back roads of East Texas so hopefully we can get out of here if we need to without getting on the freeways or interstates. Houston learned some things from Huricane Ritae and now they have a contraflow plan so that they turn  in-bound lanes of the freeways into contraflow outbound lanes so that they can handle the traffic. Problem is that once you get on, you cannot get off. ..so if traffic is stopped you are stuck with no alternatives. 

We have to make a decision by this evening if we are going to go or stay because by tomorrow it will be chaos getting out of town. It will take us several hours to load the donkeys up. Trying to get 10 donkies into a trailer is a real task. Getting the donkies into the trailer is like taking your kids to the pediatrician. They know that something bad is about to happen. Why would a donkey want to get into a trailer that has no grass growing in it….duh??  We have decided that getting miniature donkeys into a trailer is a new sport. Second only to bull-dogging and steer wrestling it will be introduced as a new sport in the 1012 Olympics known as the Donkathalon.  It’s a timed event but best done in the mud after a heavy rain when its 102 degrees outside.

So right now we are waiting a little to see what happens.

Meanwhile back in Florence…the house goes on. Barn/shop is almost finished and we are working on the fence to contain the animals when we take them up there.

The roof is framed us and they should begin decking the roof over soon. The hurricane may stall things a bit as there is alot of rain coming with it that will probably affect Florence. No real projected completion date yet but it’s possible that it could be late December or January.

May update tomorrow after the storm moves in toward land a little.

Ron Beberniss

League City, Texas

It’s been nearly 5 months since I posted on the blog and well over due.  Carol and I  have been bouncing back and forth between Houston and Florence, Alabama. After we closed on the land we started construction on the shop/barn and it is nearly finished. It’s bigger than the shop in Houston. It lacks a little trim. and a cement pad in the front and garage doors. Hopefully all of this should be done within a week to ten days.

  We have been in Florence this time for about a week and a half. We both  drove up and each of us pulled trailers on the trip up. I pulled the 20 foot flatbed and Carol pulled the horse trailer. Most everything on both trailers came from the shop. I was going to bring the tractor up this trip but decided that if I did there was nothing left  to load the heavy machinery on the trailer with so it stayed behind and it will probably come up next trip. I need the tractor  to continue clearing the pastures for the donkeys  down by the creek. And in reference to the donkeys, we had an addition to the herd during out last trip to Florence. One of our Jennies dropped us a surprise package, a little jack. He’s as friendly as can be. His mother’s name is Boo. We bought Boo this spring but had no idea she was carring a baby although she was looking a little broad when we left Houston last time. We haven’t decided on a name yet but since the donkey is the symbol of the democratic Party and since he’s black, just arrived on the scene abd relatively clueless it has been suggesyed  by my good friend John Moss that we name him  Obama. Another suggestion was that since we don’t know who his daddy is and his mother’s name is Boo we could call hin Boo-Who?

Mr Big Ears

And back to Florence….When we bought the land we were planning on developing about half of it and selling the lots to the guys that are building our house. I spent a week and a half at the courthouse tryhing to discover all of the hoops we were going to have to jump through to do that. The plan was to put in the roads and then the City of Florence would put in the utilities. It appeared that the whole process was going to be  a rather lengthy one and  that it might take as long as a year or a year and a half before utilities were available and we didn’t want to wait that long. We ended up buying a lot in the subdivision adjacent to our property.  The utilities we already in and it was ready to build on . We are in the process of building the same house that we are ultimately  going to build down on the Creek. We plan to finish the house move into it and live thre while we are sorting out how best to develop the land. Then once the roads are in we can start construction on the final house down on the creek. This way we will be able to live in the house and make whatever changes we want when we build the final version. 

Excavation of the basement

Settiing the forms for the basment walls

Pouring the walls for the basement

This is the basement after they had just finished pouring the slab. The walls of the basement are poured cement. It costs a little more that traditional masonary block construction but is a betterprocess, stronger with virtually no change of leaks. This is where we left things when we left Florence three weeks ago.We arrived here a week ago and the framing on the first floor is just about complete. They started putting the roof rafters up yesterday.

Stick framing

From down the street

Carol’s mother Vera is hee with us this time and the girls have been out seeing the sights of Florence while I have been working out at the barn. We are trying to get Vera accomodations as a local independent/assisted living facility here in Florence called Merril Gardens. She is on th e waiting list and as soon as a vacancy comes up we wil move Vera up here. Once that happens we will probably spend most of our time here in Florence living on the boat and getting all our thing up here. There are probably about 5 or 6 trailer loads of things to be brought  up here….and then we have to contend with transporting donkeys up here. At the rate they are multiplying I think we are going to need a much bigger trailer to get them all up here if we do it in one trip. Not sure when that will be as we still have to get he fences completed. We have about 3/4 of a mile of fence posts already up but need to put the board up to keep the critters contained.

We  will probably head back to Houston next week. Likely that I will do a quick turn-around load up the tractor and whatever else I can get on the trailer and come on back up while Carol stays in Houston with her mother. We don’t know when the house will be finished. It’s possible that we could be in by Christmas but more likely weill be January or February. Either way it’s not a big deal. When were here in florence we stay on the boat which is like being on vacation anyway.

We have some friends that will hopefully join us in the fall and will take a few weeks off and take Annie up the Tennessee River to Chatanooga or maybe even further up to Knoxville. Rhat will be in October of Noverber  when the trees start changing colors. Looking forward to getting Annie moving again.

I am ading a few photos taken from the aft deck of Annie on the Fourth of July. It was pretty spectacular and didn’t even have to leave the slip!

Fireworks at McFarland Park right next to Florence Harbor Marina

And this my friends is what we have to look at every morning as we drink our coffee overlooking the Tennessee River

Ron and Carol Beberniss aboard Annie

Florence Alabama…Paradise on the Tennessee River

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We just got back to Houston from Florence. Arrived here Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 in rush hour traffic and it reinforced one of the main reasons we wanted to leave. Too many people going too many places too fast and all talking on their cell phones.  We were in Florence for about two weeks and got quite a bit accomplished. One on the main reasons was to get some work done on Annie. She has been sitting out in the weather  since August with minimal attention to th varnish. We were able to get four coats of varnish on the cap rail and four coats on the windows on the lower deck. That will take of the lower deck for a while but will have to attack the upper deck on the next trip.

Work continues on the new property. We were able to get a road cut into the property down to the creek. I am guessing that it is about a quarter mile from the road to where the house will be.

There is a high limestone bluff about 80 feet tall overlooking the creek where we are going to put the house. Can’t really tell too much from the image  but it’s almost straight down to the water.  

Also we have made the arrangements to get a barn shop started. That actually takes priority over the  house in that I need a place to keep the tractor and  the skid steer so I can get the equipment up there and start clearing the land. We will have to do some serious logging on the property just to get enough clear land big enough for the  house and for the barm.

Tony Grigsby is our dirt man. He was having some problems with his bull dozer and was waiting on parts when we left. Hopefully they will  be up and going in a day or two and we can go ahead and get some for of the underbrush and trees cut out.

On the lighter side we decided to go play a little on the boat before we left. The Ohio River is still pretty high and we will need to wait out the swift current before we head up river  this spring. The Mississippi was still flooding in areas when we crossed the river at Natchez this morning.  There is a state park on the Tennessee River about 25 miles upstream from Florence. It’s called Joe Wheeler state park and its absolutely beautiful up there and we decided to go up an spend the night . Most of the trip is on Wilson Lake but leaving Florence you have to lock up through Wilson and then do the same at Wheeler Dam which is a mile or so below the park. Locking through the dam is quite an experience. Carol and I have been through the Panama Canal before on a sailboat and the locks there are small compared to the locks at Wilson Dam. The lift at Wilson is 85 feet.

This is a pictue of Carol with the downstream doors closing behind us. Annie is tied off on the starboard wall of the lock.

As soon as the downstream doors are closed the controller will open the valves  and the water starts flooding in the bottom of the lock which can cause quite a bit of turbulence and the boat has to be well secured.

Now the water level starts raising in the lock. The boat is secured to the yellow  bollard that actually floats and rises up with the water level in the lock.

When the lock is completely full, the operator lowers the catwalk into the water and then you motor out onto Lake Wilson.

Locking down is pretty much the same process in reverse. the lock operator fills the chamber with water and when you motor in the water level is the same as lake level. After you tie off and the boaj is secure you notify the lockmaster by radio and he opens the valves and the water level starts dropping. These are some images of going down at Wheeler Dam on the trip home

Each one of the horizontal lines in the cement wall is 5 feet so we have dropped 85 feet.

Once the level of the water in the lock is at downstream  river level they open the down stream gates and you are on your way once again. If there is no traffic, the whole process takes about 20 minutes.

And that is how it’s done.  There are quite a few dams in the Tennessee Valley River system. The dams have a two fold function. The first is the production of hydroelectric power for the Tennessee Valley and the second is to maintain navigability of the river. Florence is across the river from Muscle Shoals. Muscle Shoals got its name from  the shoals or shallow water in the river at that loction.  It was so shallow that steamboats could not pass at low water and they would have to be unloaded at Sheffield and goods and passengers  transported over land to a spot above the shoals and then loaded on other steamboats for the remaider of the trip up river. The building of the dam and the dredging of the channel has  maintained almost constant water levels and year round navigability of the Tennessee River.  

One the way home we picked up a little throw-away newspaper which had a little article on southern terminology which I though interesting and it sure applied to Florence.

Only a true southrner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a coniption fit and only a southerner knows that you don’t have to have them , you pitch them or throw them.  No one but a true southerner knows the exact number of catfish or croppie there are in a “mess of of fish”. A true southerner can show or point out he general direction of “yonder”. A true southerner knows exactly how long “directly” is as in he’s goin’ to town and gonna be back directly. A true southerner knows that “Gimme some sugar” is not a request for the whitle granular stuff on the table. All true southerners know exacly how long “by and by” is. True southerners grow up knowin’ the difference between “right near” and a “right fer piece”, and they know that “just down the road” means somewhere between one mile and twenty. True southerners both know and understnd the difference between a “redneck”, a “good ole boy” and “po’ white trash”.  No self respecting southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn. Southerners know that “fixin” can be noun, verb or adverb, even if they don’t know what those partsof speech mean. We may be actually “fixin’ ” a flat, or fixin’ to get ready to fix it.

True southerners make friends standing in lines. They talk to everybody. Put 100 southerners in a line and half of them will find out they are related if only by marriage. 

True southerners know that grits comes from corn and how to eat them. Southerners know that dinner is served at noon: it is the big meal of the day and that you eat what is left over from dinner at supper.  Southerners know that you never refer to Coke as pop.

Only southerners realize that Southerners never refer to one person as “y’all” …and that the plural of “Y’all” is still “ya’ll” and that the third person plural possessive pronoun is “ya’ll’s meaning that something belongs to more that one of “ya’ll.

Ron and Carol Beberniss back in Texas

Since my last post we have closed on the 48 acres of land  in Florence Alabama and are beginning the arduous task of pulling up roots in Texas and moving to Alabama. We are trying to sell off some of our holding in Texas and get rid of things that we don’t really want to move. .

 I am back in Florence Alabama which is by all considerations our new home. I drove up last week by myself while Carol is still in League City taking care of loose ends and getting ready to join me. I drove up with the small trailer in tow carrying our John Deere 6 wheel “Gator” all-terrain vehicle with an upside down canoe on top and all sorts of stuff hanging off the sides. I must have looked like the Beverly Hillbillies moving to Alabama. It was a long days drive through Lousiana and Mississippi by myself and as much as I complain about Carol’s telling me how to drive I would have probably have been here several hours sooner if she had been along as would not have gotten lost near as many times as I did.  I was real glad to see Annie floating in Florence Harbor when I arrived.

The first day here was Friday and I decided iI was going to go see our new land via the water in our inflatable dinghy. . Our property has about 1/4 mile of frontage on Cypress Creek which empties into the Tennessee River about 1/2 mile down-stream from Florence Harbor Marina. I got out on the River and it was really windy  but made it up to the Creek although the dinghy was pounding as I  motored into the wind. I made it to the Creek and the first two miles going up the creek  was absolutely beautiful with high limestone bluffs and hardwoods overhanging the creek. The water is clear and cold and it was really pretty swift. I could only go so far, however, as the prop was hitting rocks on the bottom so I turned around and headed back to the river and the marina. When I got back to the boat I changed clothes as I got  little wet on the river. As changed clothes I couldn’t find my wallet. I decided that i must have left it in the truck or maybe it had fallen out in the bedroom. I looked and looked and found  nothing. I tore the truck and boat apart looking for it. Checked the dirty clothes bag, the washing machine and nothing turned up. I  looked in the dinghy…underneath the cushions, under the gas tank, behind the cooler…no wallet. I had to face the inevitable fact that it was gone, overboard most likely at the bottom of the Tennessee River or ten miles downstream never again to be seen. . Fortunately I don’t carry and money in it but it had all of my credit cards, American Express, Master card VISA,  medical liscense, health care card and most important my drivers liscense. So today I am up off to the local courthouse to see about getting an Alabama driver’s liscense as I will ultimately have to get one. After waiting for  half an hour at the local courthouse I find that because I am from out of state  they cannot help me. I have to go to the State Troupers Headquarters across the River in Muscle Shoals . So off I go to find the State Troupers headquarters. After and hour and a half wait (like take a number) they were very nice but in a very nice way told me that I looked like a terrorist  they could issue me a temporary liscense only if I had my birth certificate, my social security card and a passport picture ID. I didn’t need all that stuff to get into medical school and probably couldn’t come up with that stuff if I was back home ! So after wasting most of the mornings in lines I decided that is was going to be easier to try to get something done back in  Texas. So I call Carol back in Texas  and being the wonderful wife that she is,  it’s her turn to go to the Texas Department of Public Safety and stand in line which she did, and after harvesting all of the necessary forms and gathering pictures, documents, passports,etc etc overnight mailed me the package that would be required to make me legal to drive again. This process required most of the day for both of us, me in Alabama and Carol in Houston. Now here is the kicker….about 4 PM my cell phone rings and its the Florence Police Department. They asked me if I had lost something!!!! Get this! Some fisherman had found my wallet floating in the Tennessee River about 10 miles down stream 24 hours after I lost it and had turned it in with everything in it.  What are the chances of that happening ??? …..a gazillion to one. Anyway we had gone through the process of cancelling all the old cards getting new ownes issued but the best thing was that I have my drivers liscense.

Meanwhile I am back at the property which we have nicknamed Rancho Bebo North. I have been walking all 48 acres of it trying to figure out how to get a road cut in so we can start clearing the site for the house and shop/barn. Tomorrow I meet with the engineer/ surveyor to review the topographical maps and will get some ideas on the best way to get a road in there. I have already met with the land clearing people that will actually put the road in and they are ready to move as soon as I tell them where. Hopefully we can begin this week. The land is pretty heavily covered with old growth trees and its difficult to get a perspective from any one vantage point as its difficult to see more than a hundred feet or so in any one direction because of heavy vegetation which will only become more pronounced as the weather warms up and the foliage increases.

There’s not a lot for me to do on the land right now  until we get the road in and the house site cleared. . I need to get things rolling and then will spend most of my time on the boat catching up with varnish and boat maintenance. Annie has been outside since September and and is in need or a lot of varnish work. While she looks pretty good still, if the varnish starts breaking down it will be a monumental task to repair so I have to give the entire boat two or three coats of fresh varnish. I am getting the boat ready to continue the voyage up the Ohio River which is still receeding from flood stage. Not sure how long that will take…maybe a month or so of dry weatehr and then we can take off again but will be within a half days drive of Florence so I can monitor the building project.

Carol is heading up here next week and will say for 10 days or so and help with the boat work and varnish. When she goes home  I will probably return to League City and bring the  CAT  track loader up here and continue with the land clearing till it’s time to take off in Annie. When thqt happens depends on the current in the Ohio River and upstream from the Tennessee River.

Ron Beberniss aboard Annie

Florence Alabama

One of our friends emailed me and wondered if we had sunk, or been abducted by pirates or whatever and I realized there has been a two month hiatus in “The Voyages of Annie”.

Carol and I are back on Annie in Florence Alabama . I went home for Christmas and left Annie in care of a good friend in Florence. Jay Martin is a professional Captain who kindly volunteered to watch Annie for me while I was gone. My daughter had her first baby on January 1 so I wanted to go back home for the great event. So now I am a grandfather of little Kate. I worked at the ranch for a while and then decided it was time to come back to the boat. I had fallen in love with Florence before I left and told Carol about this wonderful little town that I had found on the Tennessee River. When we got here it didn’t take her long to share my views. We have found some land here and plan on building our retirement home here. We stumbled onto a 47 acre tract of land on Cypress Creek which flows right through the city limits of Florence. It’s sort of a little hidden paradise where we can keep the donkeys have our own little hide-away five minutes from downtown. What they call a creek here is more like what they call a river in Texas. Annie is berthed in Florence Harbor which is no more than 10 minutes away from where we will build.

The water is clear cold and runs pretty swiftly year round. The land is heavily wooded mostly with hardwoods that are probably 100 years old.

Found a spot to build the house on a limestone bluff about 100 feet above the river.

Plan right now is to head back to Houston and get our lives organized and slightly less complicated and try to get ready to make the transition to Alabama later this year if all goes well. It’s a major change in our lives but Florence offers so much in the way of boating than the Gulf coast. . It has a good marina and there are places to go in the boat. There are numerous state parks within a half day of here where there are good anchorages. Chattanooga has a spectacular waterfront is and probably two days away and the Ohio River is just a few days down the Tennessee. And if we want to head back to the Gulf of Mexico and play with hurricanes, we’re only a matter or four or five days away down the Tombigbee Waterway. So Florence has a major advantage over where we were on the Gulf Coast for boating. Have picked up a few whistles here and there in the Florence area via running ads in the local papers. Next posting will be in a month or so when I come back to the boat to close on the land and catch up on Annie’s varnish. When the weather warms up a little we will head up the Ohio. May make a side trip up the Cumberland to Nashville or may leave that for later since it is not terribly far from our new home base.

Ron and Carol on Annie,
Florence, Alabama

Annie is currently in Florence Alabama. Came through the locks at Wheeler Dam and Wilson Dam yesterday morning. These are the locks that have the 85 foot drop…. pretty wild. Going down in a lock is somewhat like putting a ping-pong ball in the commode and then flushing it….and Annie and I are the ping-pong ball. Yesterday was a little chilly. Got down into the 20’s night before last and when I went to get the lines ready for locking through, the lines were frozen stiff. Had to throw them in the shower to warm them up a bit. When I went on deck there was a thin layer of ice all over the decks which added to the interest of the fiasco of locking Annie through the dam by myself.

I had passed Florence, Alabama on my way upstream but did not stop for several reasons. Florence used to be a big cotton center along with Decatur, Alabama which is about 30 miles or so upstream. This time I decided to stop and check out Florence. Put my bicycle ashore and rode around town. I was not aware that Florence is built on a hill which at the time seemed more like a mountain. When I finished riding around Florence I got back to the boat and almost left the dock to head down stream but it was getting late in the day. After consulting a charts I decided it would be better to leave with lots of daylight. There is marked channel downstream lined with buoys on both sides and they are hard to see at night even with the searchlight. My radar is high on top of the pilot house so when you get close to them I lose them on radar.

The marina has a courtesy car and because of the time of the year no one is using it so I decided to stay overnight and to borrow the car today and check out the countryside. Not having any clue as to where to start looking I decided to try the old barber shop routine. That’s where all of the local good ol’ boys hang out and its easy to fire up a conversation.. I learned that there were a lot of really old buildings, foundries and generally old stuff across the river in Muscle Shoals and that’s where I headed. I usually just intuitively head for the railroad tracks and follow them in both directions as anything of interest would most likely have a rail siding. On one particular street I spotted an antique store that was a little different than the average in that it had rusty old farm machinery sitting outside instead of falling apart “antique” 1960’s furniture. My excursion along the railroad tracks turned up nothing other than a lot of old warehouses.

On the way back I passed the antique shop again an decided what the heck….I’ll stop. Actually it was quite an interesting place and there was a lot of really good stuff there. After a few minutes of perusing I came across a homemade organ pipe steam whistle with an inline valve of some sort modified to serve as a whistle valve. Got a little excited for a few seconds and did a little more looking but saw nothing else. The owner of the shop was busy talking to another customer and when I got his attention I gave him one of my “whistle” cards and asked him if he had ever come across any more whistles.

Without saying a word he pointed up to a wall and high up near the ceiling hanging on a wire from a nail was a whistle that I recognized very well. It was a flat top (lenticular) Lunkenheimer (c. 1890) with the original lever and from my vantage point it looked to be in reasonably good shape. Once I got close to it I could see that he had a price tag of $300 on it. So I asked him what he would take for it and the price immediately dropped to $200. And that’s where the serious negotiating began. Suffice it to say that I got out of there for significantly less than $200 with a pretty nice whistle.

When I got my hands on it it was apparent that it was a 3.5″. It’s the first 3.5″ flat top I have come across. I have a couple of 4’s and a couple of 3’s.This one has the double bow-tie type fulcrum like the 3″ whistles as opposed to the 4″ lenticulars that have a single upright cast in fulcrum that somewhat resembles the fulcrum on a Buckeye. Anyway Annie’s first acquisition of the journey is a neat and interesting piece and will be a great addition to the collection.

It’s pretty cold and windy now. I haven’t decided if I am going to hang around here for a while and do some more whistle hunting, or head toward Nashville. From here it’s probably not more than a two hour drive to Nashville but via the water route it’s 350 miles. Have to go all the way to the end of the Tennessee River where it runs into the Ohio River and then up the Ohio River to the Cumberland and down the Cumberland to Nashville.

Got a call this evening from my good friend John Moss and he may come up a do the run to Nashville with me. That would be great to have some company and we can leave the boat in Nashville and drive back to Houston for Christmas.

rb aboard Annie…Florence Alabama

I have arrived at the rather astonishing conclusion that when you are river cruising there are only two ways to go…upstream and downstream…..so why do I need all of these complicated nautical charts???

We have made Guntersville, Alabama a center of our river travels as there is a nice marina here and there is a Walmart not too far away. We have done day trips both upstream and downstream from here. We spent a few days up in Chattanooga and did all of the touristy things. They have a very nice water front and art museums the Imax and the aquarium are within a few blocks of the waterfront.

Took two days to get up there and the trees were just starting to turn colors. It’s a little hard to see but if you look at the second image taken through the pilot house window you can see the trees tuning colors. After returning from Chattanooga we decided to go downstream to Decatur , Alabama… about 50 miles downstream. Decatur has a lot of old homes and civil war history. In addition, there was a large cotton industry there at one time with cotton warehouses. We put our bicycles ashore and spent a few hours riding around the city.. I explored some old warehouses but came up with nothing in the whistle department.

Just got back to Guntersville two nights ago. Tonight (Saturday) was the annual Guntersville Christmas boat parade and with nothing better to do we decided to go ahead and enter. Off to our favorite store….. Walmart… for Christmas lights. We threw a few lights up and as luck would have it came home with the first place for boats over 41 feet. First place had a cash prize which was enough to cover the bill at Walmart plus a gift certificate for dinner for two at a local steak house. And it was a lot of fun.

See first image.

I have also learned a another interesting phenomena about river cruising. Water levels are subject to change without prior notice depending on how much water there are letting out of the dams upstream and downstream. The amount of water being let out from the dams is a function of hydroelectric power generating needs and the weather.. In cold weather people use more power for heating and with the shorter days use more lights at night which increases needs for power. In terms of practical consideration on our way down to Decatur we decided to spend the night in a little river called Painted Rock River that feeds the Tennessee. It’s not much of a river… more like what we would call a bayou in Texas. Nevertheless it was good protection from the wind and off the main channel of the Tennessee River. The river was probably no more that 150 feet wide at the widest point and averaged more like 75 feet wide and had trees overhanging the water on both banks but the center of the river was plenty deep. . I decided rather than to drop the anchor, since there was no room to swing, I would just push the bow up on the mud bank and stay there for then night. Seemed like a good plan until Carol work up in the middle of the night and discovered that the boat was high and dry because the river had dropped about a foot and a half of water. We were like a beached whale. After careful survey of the situation, and considering it was 2 o’clock in the morning, and also since there was not much I could do about it anyway, I decided the practical thing to do was to go back to bed and reconsider options in the morning. I had a hard time going back to sleep as visions of being stuck there for a week or more waiting for a flood upstream to take place danced through my head. I was finally able to get to sleep and the next thing I remember was the sun had come up and was shining in the window to our cabin. I tried to ignore it but soon noticed that the trees outside were going by the boat rather quickly. This got my attention as they were not supposed to be moving. After another quick survey of the situation I soon realized that the water had come back up to a higher level than when I had beached the bow the prior evening and we were now floating unrestrained downstream back toward the Tennessee River. Now I am sure that there is probably some moral to this story. Unfortunately it alludes me. But, for whatever reason, I find it rather amusing.

Carol is driving back to Houston tomorrow with her mother and will probably not be back till after the first of the year so I am alone again…just me and Annie. I am trying to come up with a plan. There a three options: upstream, downstream or stay here. The later is probably not great as I have seen all of Guntersville several times and am over it. May head downstream and take the Cumberland River and head to Nashville….Christmas in Nashville sounds sorta interesting…we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

rb aboard Annie…Guntersville Alabama

Greetings from the Tennessee River in Chattanooga

Arrived in Chattanooga yesterday and once again we have internet connection. Thought yesterday that winter had finally come. It was cold and got to below freezing last night but today is a beautiful, crisp and clear Fall day. We took two days to get to Chattanooga from Guntersville. Fall colors are incredible and the trees are just now turning red and yellow. I was going to drop the anchor and take some pictures of Annie from the dinghy with the fall colors in the background as we came up through the gorges but the wind picked up yesterday and I wasn’t inclined to drop the hook on the open river. The wind was up to about 25 knots at times as a front passed and it kept changing directions as the wind roared through the gorges. Going to head up river again today towards Knoxville and maybe I can shoot some pictures of the boat.

We stopped at Hales Bar night before last. It’s not s honky tonk but the site of the first hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River. Part of the dam power plant is standing and remnants of the old lock is still there. We took on fuel at the marina at Hales Bar and the wind was so strong that we could not get off the fuel dock so they let us stay at the fuel dock that night. Next morning the winds had diminished a bit and we were off again, heading up-river into what they call the Grand Canyon of Tennessee. The river narrows down and is only maybe two hundred yards wide in the bottom of some of the canyons. The river is more river-like that some of the wider lakes above the dams on the lower Tennessee. . In Lake Guntersville, for instance, the river at Lake Guntersville is several miles wide above the dam. It’s hard to get a feeling that you’re actually on a river till you get farther north and it narrows down.

Got into Chattanooga yesterday afternoon and the wind was howling again and it was cold. There are city docks right on the waterfront which is apparently the heart of old Chattanooga.We are the only boat here. There were two other local boats here yesterday but they were gone early this AM. There is an Imax, the Tennessee State Aquarium and Fine Art Museums within a few hundred feet of the water. There are walks and stairs all along the bluffs above the river. We are tied on under an old railroad briddge that has been converted to a pedestrian/bicycle bridge. We climbed the stairs this morning and took some pictures of Annie from above. Click on images for larger photos.

There is a cruise boat called the Southern Belle that makes several daily cruises up and down the Tennessee along the Chattanooga waterfront. After we got tied up the Southern Belle came by with a load of school kids aboard. Two hours later the captain and first mate of the Southern Belle were on the dock staring at Annie..We invited them aboard and they were both impressed with Annie. They invited us down to the Southern Belle for her evening dinner cruise and gave us the grand tour of the Belle… pilothouse, engine rooms and of course got to inspect her calliope.

Today we are going to head further up river. There is another dam and set of locks at Chickamauga which is about 7 miles above Chattanooga. There is a state park there with apparently a lot of places to anchor. Going to find a place to hang out, read a few books and stay warm until Carol gets here on Tuesday. She left her car in Dog River Alabama which is 10 miles below Mobile. She is going to fly to Mobile and take a taxi to her car and then will drive up here . We will meet up somewhere here in Chattanooga maybe on Wednesday for a trip down the Tennessee while the fall colors are still in their prime.

More later.

Bebo aboard Annie in Chattanooga, Tennessee…

Greeting from Second Creek Tennessee River.

I have had no cellular access for the last five days but am close to civilization again. I believe that I am not too far from Athens, Alabama and have been able to make cell phone calls today.

I lost my crew three days ago in Columbus Mississippi on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. John Moss had to return home and rented a car for the trip to Houston. My wife decided to go with him as it would be easier than trying to get to a bus station and take a bus from some remote spot further up the Waterway. So I have been forging along by myself. I could sit in a marina and wait for someone to come and join me and be bored to death or I could keep on going by myself.

I have only spent one night in a marina in the last three weeks and that was mostly because I needed to get some charts of the Tennessee River. There is generally no lack of creeks and cuts off the waterways and rivers that make suitable anchorages out of the way of traffic. The weather had been splendid and the cool nights make sleeping great.Daytime temps climb to the mid 70’s and at night it dips to the 40’s and 50’s giving rise to morning fog on the water. I have been running the generator in the daytime to keep everything up and running including the refrigerator. At night time I shut the generator off and enjoy the peace and quiet of the waterway, with the sounds of birds and frogs and water slapping against the hull etc. broken only by the chime of the ships clock on the half hour. If I don’t go into the refrigerator it stays cold and seems like that not running for six hours at night has no adverse affect in that everything stays cold.

Running the boat by myself is not too much of a problem except when it comes to getting through locks. Then it become a Chinese fire-drill to get all the lines on and secure.Two of the locks today were absolutely massive. One had an 84 foot lift. When you enter the lock you motor the boat into this massive dark cavity with doors that are a hundred feet tall, It’s pretty impressive…and then they close the doors. It’s like being at the bottom of a well ….and then they let the water in..which has a vague resemblance of what I would think it would be like to be in a blender. I have taken a sailboat through the Panama Canal before and the locks on the Tennessee make those look small. The boat in the is 46 feet long to get an idea on size.

The scenery is absolutely stunning. I was afraid that by the time I got here that the foliage would have already turned and the trees would be losing their leaves.. Not so. The trees along the River are just beginning to turn yellow and red. At this point on the Tennessee the banks vary from high rocks bluffs to low hills but the terrain is constantly changing. There are areas of the river where there are lots of islands and shoals and creeks run into the river every mile or so. One of the first creeks that I passed after the Tenn-Tom joined the Tennessee had a waterfall at it head. What a neat place to anchor. There is very little traffic on the River. Passed three or four tows today and about as many pleasure boats. There was a lot of pleasure boat traffic of the Tennessee/Tombigbee Waterway as all of the snowbirds from the north are moving their boats south for the winter. It was not unusual to pass groups of 5-10 boats traveling south together. One anchorage we spent the night in had seven or eight boats already anchored when we got there. All of the boats had their dinghies in the water and they were all rafted together having a floating cocktail party. After we got anchored the whole raft of 8 dinghies paddled over to Annie and we got the ususal line of questions about what kind of boat it was and we give them the long saga of what it like to build a boat. And then we have to play the calliope for them.to everyone’s delight. There have been very few if any north bound boats. As we would pass the south bound caravans of boats, quite a few times we got call on the radio telling us we were going the wrong direction. We explain that we must have taken a wrong turn on the Mississippi. or that out compass has been “acting up” recently.

Whistle hunting has been somewhat slim but have seen a lot of old rusting factories in the distance and a few old smoke stacks. Makes you wonder what is just over the tree line.Most of the time it had been where there was no place to anchor and put the dinghy in the water to go ashore so it was necessary to keep on motoring. Before long I will have some wheels so I will be able to do some real hunting. My wifes parents lived in northern Alabama until two years ago and when we went to visit I spent many days out whistle hunting in the hills of Alabama. I know where there are still 10 or 12 whistles still on top of old mills and factories in the northeastern quadrant of Alabama. May have go see if they are still there. .

Ron Beberniss aboard Annie on the Tennessee River

Good morning from Dog River, Alabama

Not really sure if Dog River is a town or just a River. Got in here yesterday after taking another beating on Mississippi Sound and another flogging coming up Mobile Bay. Not sure why they call this pleasure boating??? My last installment was from Biloxi. Since then I have had no wireless internet. After leaving Biloxi I was back out on Mississippi Sound .The weather has been relatively nice but windy. Temps have been in the 60’s and 70’s but the wind has remained out of the ENE at 20 + mph. Mississippi sound if fairly shallow …rarely being over 10 feet deep and as a result she throws up pretty steep chop when the wind blows. Not exactly great boating weather. There have been small craft advisories in effect daily.

I stayed in Biloxi for only a day. There was a great anchorage but otherwise nothing to do. Nearest marine store was 10 miles away. Nothing but hotels and casinos lined the shore. The only thing of interest was the Maritime Museum had two replica schooners at their docks that went out on day charters. Unfortunately the museum was destroyed by Katrina. After leaving Biloxi I headed east . Navigation is pretty straight forward. There are some shoals to watch out for but I decided to stay in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) which is still open water but marked with buoys and daymarks. The wind was on my nose and while Annie is pretty comfortable in calm water she has a lot of buoyancy forward so she tends to ride over the waves rather than cutting through them. As a result she pounds with the wind on her nose and rolls if the wind is on the beam and throws lots of spray. She ships water over the forward lower deck when there is any chop.. This isn’t a major problem except that you go forward while underway you will get drenched.

When I left Biloxi I was out in the weather for 6 hours and I said enough was enough. My best shot was head up to Bayou La Batre, Alabama where I had been twenty years ago in Moonshine on our first cruise. Must have been 6 or 7 miles up the channel from the ICW to Bayou La Batre. Luckily I picked up a shrimper headed into the channel and stayed off his quarter for about 5 miles. His wake broke some of the swell. Once I got into the bayou It was a relief to be in flat water again. Bayou La Batre sort of reminds me of Kemah the way Kemah used to be….a narrow channel with shrimp boats packed two and three deep. Everywhere there were still remnants of Hurricane Atria . There were remains of building blown over and boats sunk everywhere and half the docks were collapsed. . There was an old shrimper laying on its side across the bayou from where I tied up. Sort of expected Forrest Gump to come putting by any minute. Got into Bayou La Batre Saturday afternoon. Tied up on an abandoned dock of which there are a lot of since Katrina. Dropped the bicycle on the dock and went exploring. Unfortunately there was not much to explore by land so decided to do it by dinghy. Put the inflatable in the water and spent a few hours putting down the bayous and branches looking at boats and the remnants of the storm..

My plan was to wait till Monday morning and go to the marine supply house/hardware store in Bayou La Batre and get a chart of Mobile bay as I did not have one. Could not believe that in a fishing town that I could not find a chart but nada…zippo..not a chart in sight.. So I decided to go without one. Since I had no wireless internet connection I could not pull one up online. I left Bayou La Batre around 9 AM yesterday and headed back to the sound where the winds and seas were about the same as I had left them. 20 kts and 3-4 foot seas. Not really a big deal but just had to stay at the helm. Leaving the wheel for mote than 30 seconds was out of the question.

Had some minor problems getting into Dog River in that I found some spoil banks that were not evident. I was going to run straight up the western shore of Mobile Bay but found some shallow spots and didn’t know how to get through them without a chart so ended up backtracking and going out to the Mobile ship channel to find my way north. I could have probably pulled up a chart on the computer but I couldn’t leave the wheel for that long. Couldn’t risk getting into trouble with the boat out thereby myself with the wind howling. With this north wind blowing for the last week it has blown a fair amount of the water out of Mobile Bay so tides are two feet below normal and I was dragging bottom getting in the channel yesterday. Once inside the bridge I found a fuel dock and tied up. Again it was nice to be in flat water. I took on diesel and water. Spent an hour washing the boat down to get the salt residue off. Did some routine maintenance on the boat while I was still at the dock. Checked the batteries as I had noticed they had been not holding the charge like they should. I discover that two of the batteries are the ones that I put on the boat when I first fired up the electrical system 6 years ago. No wonder they are tired. Called Carol and she is going to bring 4 new batteries when she comes. She will be leaving home in the morning to drive to Alabama. She will meet me here at Dog River and we will leave the car here. We will have to find a way to get back here and pick up the car sometime later. Will probably have to take a bus back to Mobile and then a taxi down here to collect the car. Meanwhile she is running around picking up stuff for the boat. I emailed her lists of thing to bring. Besides she is trying to take care or her mother and find someone to take care of the donkeys while we are gone, in addition to paying bills etc. We are waiting on a circuit breaker for the main electrical panel on the boat to arrive UPS. Hopefully it will come today and if it does, she will leave first thing in the morning for Alabama. She should be here tomorrow evening along with my friend John Moss who will go with us up the Mobile and Black Warrior River. Will be nice to have an extra set of hands for handling lines when going through the Locks on the waterway. Sure will be nice to have someone to talk to. This is the longest Carol and I have been away from each other. Sure do miss her.

Tomorrow I will probably do more maintenance on the boat and just do some general cleaning getting ready for my crew to arrive… plus getting ready to head north on the waterway. I changed the oil in both main engines in Bayou La Batre and both gen sets are up and running fine so there is nothing major to do. But there is a plethora of little things that need to be tended to. I have a maintenance log and whenever I see something that needs to be done I make a note and then check it off when completed. I am not sure what cellular coverage will be like on the Black Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers. It may be sparse. Not sure when my next installment will be.

I have discovered three more scrumptious ways to prepare Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage biscuits…unfortunately they still taste like cardboard with Crisco on them.

Ron Beberniss aboard Annie in Dog River, Alabama.