Departure is eminent. Just talked to the marina and the boat is up in slings and ready to go in the water in the morning. They just finished painting the patches where the jack stands were. Ron Cowan is feeling bad today. Has some type of vertigo issue so not sure if they are going to be leaving with us in the morning or not. There are plenty of stops along then way to catch up, all within an easy drive from Florence. If they meet us somewhere down the line it will just be a matter of shuffling cars around.
We spent the day at the boat yesterday. Carol spent most of the day in the galley, inventorying and discarding stuff that was old or out of date and restocking with staples we had brought from the house. We have enough food for the four of us for several days. Plan is to spend the night at Pebble Isle Marina in 2 days and use their courtesy car to go to Walmart and do heavy provisioning there. Have to make use of the transportation when we have it. Will also get diesel fuel there at Pebble Isle. It has the cheapest diesel fuel on the river. Its $3.87 per gallon and the next marina with fuel is Green Turtle and its $4.11 a gallon. The idea is to fuel up wherever we can get the best prices so we will probably take on 500 gallons or so. That equates to 1 3/4 tons of diesel fuel. Sounds like a lot but since the boat weighs about 75,000 pounds it amounts to less than 2% of our gross weight. Not all marinas have diesel fuel so we need to always have some reserve. Actually, we should likely have enough fuel aboard to make it to Pittsburg.
I spent the day yesterday compounding and waxing the hull. My good friend David Quinn came down and helped out. I told him I needed someone with a strong back and shoulders and a weak mind because anyone with a lick of sense would know better than to volunteer for the job. It was in the 90’s with 95% humidity and you’re holding a 12 pound buffer above your head for hours at a time. The buffer kept getting heavier and heavier. I swear by the end of the day it must have weighed at least 50 pounds. We were at it most of the day and finished by about 7 pm. We were pooped at the end but Annie really looked pretty good for a gal with a nearly 20 year old paint job that had been banged against docks, piers, lock walls and unseen buoys up and down the rivers. I still have a lot of stuff to rearrange and put away but that can be done once we get under way. We have no clue what time we will get going, but need to be gone by noon. Only one issue is how long it will take to lock through Pickwick dam. It’s a busy lock handling all of the Tennessee River traffic plus the boats heading up or down the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway from the Ohio. Once we clear the lock its about a 60 mile run to the Clifton Marina where we spend the first night.
Voyages of Annie 