It was a cold, cold winter morning. James was up and ready to go early this morning, but he had some issues with his windlass and spent almost an hour getting his anchor up. We left around 7:30 a.m. and during our travel today we entered the Central Standard Time Zone. We traveled from Spivey Light to Battery Hill anchorage today. We went 74 nautical miles, approximately 9 hours with 7.5 hours being underway. We passed through Chattanooga today. The Gorge was beautiful with the snow on the mountains. You’ll see one photo that I took while Shelia and I were just lounging on the sofa looking out the window at the beautiful mountains as we passed through.
We made great time and actually got to our anchorage before dark; however, we spent several hours trying to get our anchor to hold. After many attempts, we ended up losing power to our windlass and Tracy tried to put his anchor out. Come to find out, the bottom was mostly rock (Tracy did get his anchor cleaned though lol) and Tracy’s anchor wouldn’t hold either. It was dark, cold and late. We were exhausted. We were going to try to find another anchorage, but we had absolutely no cell signal. James spotted a small dock nearby and decided to try to tie up to it for the night. It was a challenge….docking our 72’ boat on a 20’ dock….but he did it like a champ! I’m not going to lie….I was a little afraid when I had to jump off the boat and onto that little dock, but I made it and did not fall in lol! Shelia has been a great deckhand and she threw the ropes to me. James had prepared me that if he had any trouble keeping the boat at the dock, he would have to swing around and leave me on the dock…in the dark….in the middle of nowhere…all alone. But he was able to keep it there while I got 2 ropes tied off. He found a big tree on the bank and we tied another rope to it because the current was unbelievably strong (and we were off the main channel). We were at River Park & Boat Ramp in Bridgeport, AL. It looked like a really nice park and seemed to be a safe area. Once we were tied up, Tracy brought his boat over to raft up to us. Shelia made her famous potato soup for us tonight. We had to reheat it for the guys as they were working on the anchor and missed dinner while trying to find a place to anchor. We were all mentally exhausted and turned in early on this night. I was able to get a few text messages out to the girls to let them know we were safe and had docked for the night.
Coming into Chattanooga....
The Gorge....
Our view from the sofa....
Tying up at Battery Hill
Nebo Tracking
