Sea-Ya! A blog created by Dan and Katie for friends and family to track us on the Great Loop!

Today we left our spectacular anchorage in Dover Tennessee area.  It was 29° this morning and there was ice on the bow and top of the boat.  Not a lot of ice, but ice.  We did not sign up for ice.  Happy Halloween.  Fortunately the fog quickly burned off and the weather warmed up and I ended up having to go in short sleeves and open the window to let some breeze through.  I even turned on the dash fan keep some air moving over me because it was so hot.  Suffering for the sake of migration you know... The areas built by the Tennessee Valley authority are fascinating.  As you're driving across the lake you see on the charts roads on the bottom bridges on the bottom all kinds of towns on the bottom.  They literally flooded entire towns and moved them to higher ground in order to build these dams and generate electricity.    Every once in a while there's a bridge across the water.  Th...

Not sure why but tonight we have Internet and fast, then don't.  Then fast again. Totally dropping out for long periods.   This why I posted a text status before this .. This morning started out cold and rainy... but something that ended that made us really smile.  Today Justin from Bourbon City Yacht Tenders brought us our new dinghy!   Hooray we can get to shore again in remote places and anchor out and use dinghy docks to get free access to towns that have them.   Tonight we are anchored in a beautiful anchorage with pretty bad cell coverage off Kentucky Lake.  I'm hoping it will improve as the sun goes down....  but if not we have reading we can do.... I'll post more about the dinghy when we actually get to use it.  It's far too cold and windy right now to be outside with a light jacket. (all I have with me, because it's supposed to be 70 every day!  That's the whole point of the loop.   Te...

After three nights in Paducah without power (other than our generators) and multiple nights out at anchor on the way down the Mississippi we have now entered the Cumberland river watershed.  We will be here for two nights and then move on to the Tennessee River to continue further south.   We are at Green Turtle Bay Resort and we have refilled our diesel tanks and again have shore power and marina wifi!   Plus we got to get our waste tanks pumped out - which will prevent messes if they get too full. (Ain't boating grand?).  Tomorrow I'll be doing some maintenance on the boat and Katie will be doing laundry.  (So interesting, right?  That ought to make a compelling blog...).  Anyway - today we had a 40ish mile trip from Paducah up the Ohio River to the Cumberland river (the river to Nashville) and then up into the Land Between the Lakes.   I love this area.   Everything is flooded Kentucky hill count...

We didn't stay put today but we only moved a mile (in the boat) and several miles (on foot).   Today we are tied up to friends at the dock in Paducah KY.    We will be staying the night and tomorrow night as well.  Time for a bit of rest and tourist stuff.   Tomorrow might rain so today we spent some time walking.  And shopping.   And visiting museums.   And looking at art.    First we visited the National Quilt Museum.   I don't quilt.  Neither does Katie.    But the artistic creativity is just stunning.    This kind of stuff was built by stitching and cutting little pieces of cloth together as well as puffing them up and sewing them to create texture.  Simply amazing.   Next we walked along the 'city wall'.  Paducah is a walled city. Not because it needed walls for defense, but because it needed them to keep the Oh...

Today we turned the corner.  Ok, we turned about 50 of them.  The Mississippi gets a real case of the Twisties down near the south end of Illinois.     Today we finished our journey on the Mississippi and 'turned the corner' onto the Ohio River.   The lower Mississippi is really low, but still navigable.... But it's really unfriendly for pleasure boaters.  There are few marinas between The Ohio River and New Orleans and also few fuel stops.  There are simply no tourists as it is swampy, ugly, and mostly boring.    We journeyed up the Ohio through Olmsted lock: This lock is HUGE and our eight boats looked tiny in it.  The water wells up in the middle of the lock as they fill it and it's a tad unsettling.  We were safelg bound to a floating bollard though and escaped with only minor scratches in the rub rail.. Now we are in the area called the Land Between the Lakes...

Our Anchorage tonight...  Today we left Hoppies' dock and journeyed 120 miles downstream.   The Mississippi gets pretty twisty down here and the barges run 24x7.  Today I 'got to be' flotilla lead for the first time..  This means keeping the deep stuff under the boat, avoiding floating logs, operating radio to tell others about debris, contacting towboats pushing 360000# barges  and determining where they want us (so we don't get run over) and generally staying sane.  A beautiful cloudy but 80 degree day that had hot, cold and a bit of rain but not enough to get wet.   Now we are anchored  (both front and rear anchors) holding us straight in the river (but not in the channel) behind a large bridge.  This should keep us from getting run over and the rear anchor should keep wind from pushing us sideways into another boat.... It's supposed to rain over...